It's None of Your Business
Conservatives are putting gender identity at the center of their message now. They are passing laws punishing trans people, they want to eradicate "transgenderism," which, first, it isn't an "ism." Some people are mislabeled at birth, that's all. The doctor holds them up, looks them over, checks the M or the F on the birth certificate, and the new person sets out on a new life. Mom and Dad paint the nursery blue or pink, they buy dresses or jeans -- did you ever look at the boys' aisle versus the girls' aisle at a toy store? They are like two different planets. If the M was checked the kid gets treated one way, a different way if the F was checked. You might think it's sexist or whatever and maybe it'll change someday but that's how we do it now.
In the meantime, the baby doesn't know who they are or how they got here, they learn from the people around them and from the sensations of embodiment, and some small number of children discover that the people around them are making a mistake. It isn't an "ism," a belief system, there is just a matter of maturing into your own subjective experience and knowing who you are, including the fact that you might not be who you were told you are.
Conservatives like to make fun of the concept of identity, like the Fox host who said he was going to start identifying as Chinese for the benefits it would bring him, ah ha ha ha. Identity is a unique kind of word. Where most words refer to a thing or event in the environment, the word identity means "the thing itself." Identity is not what a thing is called, its identity is it, itself. The identity of this rock is this rock. For people, identity is the answer to the question, who are you? You can ask the hilarious Fox host, are you Chinese? and he will say, of course not. You don't decide to identify as something-or-other, it is just what you are. Identity is not a label, it is essence. And a thing or a person may have essential qualities that are not apparent to an external observer.
When a majority of people share a culture they may not be aware of having an identity at all. They simply see themselves as normal or ordinary, and so white conservatives accuse other groups of practicing "identity politics." But take a white American and drop them into a city or village in Asia, or Turkey, or Africa, and you will find them suddenly extremely aware of their identity. "I don't eat that, I'm an American." "I'm sorry, I don't really 'get' that kind of music." "I am only wearing this strange outfit to fit in." Fact is, only 4.25 percent of the world's population lives in the US, and only about 75 percent of those identify as white, meaning about 3.1 percent of human beings are white Americans. And they are only normal or ordinary when they can bunch together.
Well there is no sense getting academic about it. There is only one relevant thing to keep in mind here:
It's none of your business.
If somebody is transgender or not, if they are gay or not, if they are Black or Christian or Asian or short or tall or speak with an accent -- it's none of your business. It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion.
posted by JimK at 1:06 PM
47 Comments:
An Alabama recreation center is facing criticism after a basketball team of 10-year-old girls beat their all-male opponents for the league championship, but the center awarded the losing boys the winner’s trophy.
The rec center in Hoover, Alabama, invited the victorious girls to the awards ceremony, according to Jayme Mashayekh, one of the girls’ moms. But it consisted of watching the boys they had just beaten get the championship trophy.
“These 5th grade girls played their hearts out, left it all on the floor and battled their male counterparts only to be told, ‘No, I’m sorry you don’t count,’” Mashayekh wrote on Facebook.
She wrote in an update that the city and the rec center have since offered to “make things right for the girls,” but didn’t provide details.
Mashayekh explained on Facebook, in a post dated Feb. 28, that her daughter Rylie had played with other girls for three years in a competitive girl’s league representing a Birmingham suburb called Spain Park, which is in the Hoover School District.
“Half way through their season they were told they could not use the Hoover gyms for their practices unless they paid to play in the Hoover rec league,” Mashayekh wrote. She said the girls were told that “to stay together as a team they had to play up a level in competition,” which pitted them against 5th-grade boys.
Through the season, Mashayekh said, the girls were “middle of the pack,” though they lost several games by 1 point.
“Playing the boys was a challenge they rose to meet,” the mom wrote. “It made them better players and a better team.”
Right before the championship, the girls team was informed they could play, but wouldn’t receive the championship trophy if they won.
“‘Excuse me? What?’” Mashayekh wrote. “What did they do to get disqualified? Did they not pay their dues? Did they not play up a level in competition? Oh, it’s because they’re GIRLS?!?!”
The girls ended up winning the whole tournament. As promised, they didn’t get the trophy.
A Facebook user commenting on Mashayekh’s post explained that the rec center has limited gym space and high demand, so teams that have played together are asked to join a rec league for practice time.
“Most coaches want to keep their [elite] team together and play them in the rec league,” the user wrote. “Since this would be an unfair advantage because most of the... teams are comprised of the best players, they are required to play ‘up’ by two grade levels. In this case, the girls are in 5th grade and there is no 7th grade girls rec league so they had to play against the 5th grade boys.”
On Monday, the city said in a statement that its parks and recreation department is reviewing youth athletic league policies “to ensure that all competition and recognition procedures are fair to all participants and that those procedures are more clearly understood.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times reported on Saturday, is not what it used to be. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped out on what has for years been the conservative movement’s premier cattle call. Mike Pence will be at a donor retreat instead. Fox News will not be streaming the event, nor will its popular hosts be speaking from the stage. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the event, was recently accused by a Republican campaign aide of groping, and his star is, it’s fair to say, somewhat diminished.
But if CPAC has fallen from its pedestal, it remains a useful barometer for gauging where the conservative base is, and where it is headed. And the future, right now, looks grim as hell.
Here’s Michael Knowles, a commentator at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, receiving a loud cheer for saying that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.”
Knowles is a replacement-level conservative pundit, whose name I know only because he co-hosted Ted Cruz’s podcast for two years. But that is sort of the point. The call for transgender identity to be “eradicated” is chilling; it is not a word normal people use, unless they are describing a pestilence. But this is not at all out of step with much of the Republican party. DeSantis has weaponized his state government against trans kids. So has Texas Gov. Greg Abbot. As David Weigel reported in Semafor last month, Donald Trump, too is proposing to establish “that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth”—that is, erasing the category from existence.
Conservatives don’t really talk about abortion like they used to, because they’ve largely won that battle, and perhaps out of some self-awareness how unpopular that victory ultimately was. But they’re speaking about the lives of transgender kids and adults in increasingly apocalyptic terms.
If parents want to protect their children from transgenderism, it's none of your business.
It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion.
Florida iis leading the way to parental rights. HB 1223 in Florida is a bill that will bar instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity through eighth grade, expanding the ground-breaking 2022 law that prohibited such instruction in earlier grades.
The eight-page bill also would prevent school employees from telling students their preferred pronouns if those pronouns “do not correspond to his or her sex” or asking students about their preferred pronouns.
The bill is certain to pass on March 7.
The 2022 law prohibited instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and required it to be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in in higher grades.
Under the enhanced bill, the “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” test would continue to apply in ninth through 12th grades.
The bill goes beyond the instruction issues to address personal pronouns. The bill says that it “shall be the policy” of all public-schools “that a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex.”
"It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion."
Which is EXACTLY why you should leave trans people alone. Some people are trans. That's the just the way the world is. It can be detected in their brain scans as teenagers. Trans kids will get bullied in school for being "too masculine" or "too feminine" (sometimes to the point of suicide) even before they know what being trans is. Somehow other kids pick up on this and start harassing them just for fun.
In safe environments, trans kids can thrive and enjoy school, learn well and go on and do great things.
In unsafe environments, trans kids, if they are lucky, will learn how to pretend to be "more masculine" or "more feminine" to avoid the harassment and maybe they'll get through school without to much abuse and damage.
For the unlucky ones, they may be tormented mercilessly until they try (or "succeed") to commit suicide.
The fact that kids know that some trans kids exist doesn't harm them any more than knowing some kids with other medical conditions exist, whether it be missing limbs, peanut allergies or cerebral palsy.
Using the chosen pronouns for these kids helps them survive school and grow up to be normal, functioning adults with a rare medical condition.
There is simply nothing wrong with that.
I could agree with most of what you said but:
if they have a "rare medical condition," how to handle it should be under the purview of their parents
and, while you generalize, it may be a medical condition for some and a psychological condition for others
also, the term "'bullying" is too widely interpreted
violent behavior is wrong, regardless, of course
and teachers should intervene in situation of mockery and teasing
on the other hand, I think you also mean, by "bullying", any viewpoint such as that of JK Rowling
normal kids should not be forced by teachers to acknowledge transgenderism
and, let's face it, that's the actual situation right now
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis positioned himself as the architect of a new conservative vision for the nation during a State of the State address on Tuesday that championed his groundbreaking stances through the pandemic and culture wars as a blueprint for Republican leadership.
The address came at the outset of a 60-day legislative session that has added political significance because it is expected to serve as a platform for DeSantis' highly expected presidential campaign.
“We defied the experts. We bucked the elites. We ignored the chatter. We did it our way, the Florida way," DeSantis told lawmakers in Tallahassee. "And the result is that we are the number one destination for our fellow Americans who are looking for a better life.”
The Legislature's Republican supermajority is eager to promote DeSantis’ political prospects and is expected to rubber stamp virtually all of his agenda, which is packed with issues, such as gender, that could prove popular in a GOP presidential primary.
DeSantis kicked off a session where the GOP will push issues like telling teachers which pronouns they can use for students, making guns more available to Floridians, keeping immigrants that are in the country illegally out of the state, and criminalizing some drag shows, as Tennessee recently did.
In his speech, DeSantis ran through the conservative accomplishments of his tenure thus far and highlighted upcoming measures that will be popular with some Republican primary voters, such as a proposal to eliminate concealed firearms permits.
In the 1960s, there was a professor and business analyst named Laurence J. Peter. He became famous for coming up with something called the Peter Principle. The informal way to describe it was this: In a business hierarchy, an employee does well and is promoted. He does well in his new, higher-level job and is promoted again. He does well in that position and is promoted yet again. Finally, he rises to a job that is beyond his abilities. He is no longer promoted and stays in the job he does not do well.
"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence," Peter wrote. "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."
It was bitterly funny and true. And now, we are seeing the Peter Principle in action, fittingly in a person named Peter, at the Biden administration Department of Transportation.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg has mishandled several crises that have come into his area of responsibility. One was the supply-chain crisis. The other was the Southwest Airlines meltdown. And most recently has been the disastrous train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. In response, Buttigieg has received the most intense criticism of his career. He is not reacting well.
Over the weekend, Buttigieg unburdened himself to CNN. He "admits he got it wrong on the Ohio train derailment response," CNN reported, and even concedes that his critics have a point. "But while the criticism is fair, he says, the critics are mostly not," the CNN article continued.
Buttigieg then launched into a tirade of anger, self-pity, and sheer non sequitur that one might not have expected from a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar. But out it came. "It's really rich to see some of these folks — the former president, these Fox hosts — who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite," Buttigieg told CNN, "whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn't know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country. You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl's?"
Huh? Faced with criticism of his botching the extraordinarily serious matter of the East Palestine derailment, after the Southwest debacle, after the supply-chain mess — after all that, Buttigieg's response is to ask: "You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl's?" It simply made no sense. You know that saying about living rent-free in someone's head? It appears some at Fox News have taken up residence inside the Buttigieg cranium.
His poor performance in office is especially damaging to Buttigieg because he wants to become president of the United States. Indeed, most people first heard of Buttigieg in 2020 when, as the 37-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, having served in no other public office, he ran for the Democratic nomination for president. He sort of won the Iowa caucuses ("sort of" because state Democrats made a hash of the vote counting) but later faltered before the rise of Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic nomination.
But Buttigieg had created a national image for himself. Before, who knew this guy, this former mayor of a town of 103,353 people? Afterward, he was something of a Democratic star. He was smart, from the heartland, had served in the military in a deployment to Afghanistan, was gay, had a husband named Chasten, and, once in Washington, adopted two infant boys and went on a long parental leave. What was not for a Democrat to like?
Buttigieg was widely known to harbor presidential ambitions still. Indeed, when President Joe Biden's job approval dipped, when he messed up one thing or another, and when Democrats focused on the president's advanced age, Buttigieg was waiting in the wings, ready to step in should Biden decide not to run.
Ready, at least, until his recent troubles. Taking the transportation secretary job might have seemed like a good resume-builder for Buttigieg, giving him some national experience and allowing him to prove his ability to run a large organization, in this case, the 58,622-employee Department of Transportation. But now, the job has done just the opposite — it has shown Buttigieg to be unable to handle running a large organization when faced with the sort of crises that happen on an unfortunately regular basis.
The Peter Principle suggests that Peter Buttigieg, at just 41 years of age, has already risen to his level of incompetence. It's fair to say many national Democrats did not expect a rising star to peak so soon, and Buttigieg himself certainly did not. But moving up has its risks, and unfortunately for himself and for the nation, Buttigieg has found a job he cannot do.
"and, while you generalize, it may be a medical condition for some and a psychological condition for others"
Gender dysphoria IS a medical condition, that's why it's in the DSM and has a specified treatment regime.
Whatever you want to call a "psychological condition" is just something you made up for the sake of argument, but has no legal or medical standing.
"on the other hand, I think you also mean, by "bullying", any viewpoint such as that of JK Rowling"
One can easily disagree with JKR without bullying, and she doesn't deserve any harassment any more than trans people do.
The problem is that some people, under the guise of "free speech" say all sorts sickening, dangerous, inaccurate, slanderous, and harmful things against trans people. That is hate speech, not free speech, and it is dangerous - it should be discouraged as a matter of public safety.
"normal kids should not be forced by teachers to acknowledge transgenderism"
Not sure exactly what you mean by "transgenderism," but acknowledging basic facts like trans people exist, and the correct way to address them if you are confused, doesn't harm anyone.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
A federal judge heard trial testimony without a jury before convicting Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former U.S. Naval reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is scheduled to sentence Speed on May 8 for his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
McFadden convicted Speed of all five charges in his indictment, including a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding, the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the Electoral College vote. The judge also convicted Speed of four misdemeanors.
The FBI recorded Speed’s conversations with the undercover agent more than a year after the riot. Speed told the agent that he marched to the Capitol with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group, authorities said. The Proud Boys are the extremist right-wing group that Trump told to "stand back and stand by" during his presidential debate with Joe Biden:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHhB1ZMV_o
Speed also spewed antisemitic rhetoric linked to his dislike for government, according to prosecutors. They argued that Speed’s hateful ideology helps explain why he joined the Capitol attack.
Speed was “deeply worried about a Biden presidency” and believed false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent, prosecutors wrote in a court filing. They said Speed expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler and told the undercover agent that he believes Jewish people control Biden, a Democrat.
“Speed saw the Jews as ‘everywhere,’ fighting to destroy Christians, and he was not willing to sit by,” prosecutors wrote.
McFadden said the limited trial testimony about Speed’s antisemitism wasn’t a factor in his verdict. But the judge cited statements that Speed made about Jan. 6 in support of his conviction on the obstruction charge.
“His own words show the defendant’s actions were knowing and willful,” the judge said.
Speed was arrested in June 2022 on riot-related misdemeanor charges. A grand jury later indicted him on the felony obstruction charge.
On Jan. 6, Speed drove to Washington, D.C, from his home in Vienna, Virginia. After attending the “Stop the Steal” rally, where Trump addressed a crowd of supporters, Speed joined the mob that attacked the Capitol.
Around 3 p.m., Speed entered the building through a door to the Senate wing of the Capitol after other rioters breached it. He remained inside the Capitol for roughly 40 minutes.
After leaving, he texted another rioter that he had “backed out” after hearing that the “vote had been postponed.”
“In other words,” prosecutors wrote, “because Speed thought he succeeded in obstructing the certification, he left the U.S. Capitol Building.”
An undercover FBI agent, posing as “a like-minded individual,” met with Speed at least three times in March 2022 and April 2022. The FBI recorded their discussions of his motives and actions on Jan. 6.
“Speed wanted to stop that certification. He left the U.S. Capitol only because he believed he succeeded in that effort,” prosecutors wrote.
During the recorded conversations, Speed also “outlined a plan to enlist Christians to wipe out the country’s entire Jewish population.”
To defeat the Jewish threat and topple the government, Speed told the (agent) that a violent response was necessary — and that the Jews stood in the way,” prosecutors wrote.
Speed began “panic buying” thousands of dollars worth of firearms and silencers in February 2021, prosecutors wrote. They said Speed later told the agent that he had a plan “to kidnap and disappear his enemies after mock trials, and he thought the silencers could come in useful for the effort.”
The undercover agent testified under a pseudonym at a separate trial for Speed in Virginia on gun charges. After a retrial in January, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia convicted Speed of three counts of unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm silencer. He is [scheduled] to be sentenced for those convictions on April 13.
Speed was a petty officer first class in the U.S. Naval Reserves and was assigned to the Naval Warfare Space Field Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI said. The National Reconnaissance Office operates U.S. spy satellites used by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The agency said Speed was not part of the reserve unit at the time of the Jan. 6 riot.
Hello TTFers!
I've been too busy to post recently so I'm sorry for not responding to any comments aimed at me since my last post. I expect to make a substantial post within the next few weeks. If you're relatively new to TTF and don't remember me posting prior to my return from a long abscence just prior to Crismas, I've been setting straight the opponents of fairness like W/R/BA on this blog for around two decades. If you'd like to read more of what I've written, please check the TTF archives. I posted for the first several years under my former name, Randy Schimnosky. I hope to be back soon,
XXOO,
Priya
"Hello TTFers!"
Well, hello, stranger!!!!
"I've been too busy to post recently so I'm sorry for not responding"
Apology accepted. But, all that's not what's important. The important thing is for you to get better. Take as long as you need. Miracles don't happen overnight!
"I expect to make a substantial post within the next few weeks"
That's great. We will all look forward to hearing from Randy again and hear a mea culpa...
"If you're relatively new to TTF"
You must be addressing those hordes of "relative" newsters that continually flock to this fascinating blog.
LOL!
"If you'd like to read more of what I've written"
Yeah, I think we'll all pass
"I hope to be back soon,"
well, faint hopes are still hopes
"XXOO"
this is like close encounters of the third kind
I'll try
ZZQQ
At the government level, pandemic preparedness is as much about protecting critical supply chains as it is about administering medical treatments. What the COVID-19 pandemic showed is that the flow of information, which may be the single most vital resource in the supply chain, is utterly broken. In many cases, it was actively undermined by senior public health officials including the former chief medical adviser to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
New emails released in a congressional probe show that Fauci helped direct the publication of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” an influential scientific paper published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, that claimed COVID-19 could not have leaked from a laboratory. Fauci then cited the paper—in effect quoting himself, since he coordinated the article behind the scenes and was given final approval before it published—as if it was an independent source corroborating his assertions that COVID could only have come from a bat and not from a lab.
“There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve,” Fauci said at a presidential briefing on April 17, 2020, exactly one month after “Proximal Origin” was published. “And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
But why would Fauci go to so much trouble to control the information surrounding the origins of the virus while sending the message to Americans that the idea that COVID had come from a lab was a conspiracy theory? And why would science journalists and peer-reviewed science publications go along with the effort?
Fauci, it appears, may have been trying to hide his connections to the Wuhan Laboratory of Virology (WIV). For years, according to a report at The Intercept, the National Institutes of Health (where Fauci served as a director) directed government grants to the Chinese facility where multiple investigations by federal agencies have now concluded the virus likely originated—specifically to fund the controversial gain of function (GoF) research that intentionally engineers deadly viruses in order to study them. Even if this was all merely a coincidence, it certainly looked bad. Fauci seemed so alarmed by the optics that in January 2020, he sent an email to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the single-word, all-caps subject line “IMPORTANT”—something he does not do in the hundreds of pages of other emails released to the public via FOIA requests. The email Fauci sent contained a link to a scientific study that was then spreading across the internet, which had originally been published in 2015 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV’s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. In the body of the email, Fauci wrote to Auchincloss, “It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on …You will have tasks today that must be done.”
What were those tasks? It’s impossible to know from the email but one can speculate that if Fauci wanted to control the narrative about the outbreak of COVID-19 it would have been a monumental and near impossible task. Reporters could find public records showing the connections between his office at the NIH and China’s WIV. Fauci might be able to find a few journalists credulous enough to simply dismiss the fact that COVID was first reported in the city containing China’s largest facility for producing coronaviruses, but surely there was no way he could get the entire media to go along. If he had, he may have revealed just how dysfunctional and bought-off science journalism has become, a reality that Americans would be well advised to confront before the next pandemic.
The deeper phenomenon at work, however, is that in the U.S. a large number of professionals who cover science for general readers and for news publications like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal are not—and do not pretend to be—journalists per se. They are science writers whose field is science communications—a distinction with a huge difference. They see their role as translating the lofty work of pure science for a general audience, rather than as professional skeptics whose job is to investigate the competing interests, claims, and billion-dollar funding streams in the messy world of all-too-human scientists.
From the beginning of the pandemic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other leading mainstream outlets were taking their cues—including their facts and their seemingly unflappable certainties—from peer-reviewed publications with authoritative professional reputations like Nature, Science, and The Lancet.
It was this small handful of peer-reviewed science and medical journals—and to a shocking extent just these three—on which the consumer media based key narratives, like the idea that SARS-CoV-2 could not possibly have come from a lab. Boiled down, “the science” on a given issue was often conclusively reduced to whatever these journals published.
But for the establishment science publishing community, the pandemic also had an unintended consequence. Through journalistic investigations, often powered by FOIA requests that ensnared hundreds of email exchanges with scientists and science writers, a spotlight was turned on science journalism itself. Writers like Paul Thacker, a contributor to The BMJ, Emily Kopp, a reporter for the watchdog group U.S. Right to Know, Michael Balter, who has contributed dozens of pieces to Science magazine, and the powerful decentralized group of COVID investigators called DRASTIC, exposed the inner workings of an industry that claims to speak for science but often works for political and corporate interests.
In many instances, pandemic-related science journalism smacks of questionable motives. The most high-profile example of this was the now infamous letter by 27 scientists published in The Lancet on March 7, 2020, asserting that they “overwhelmingly conclude” that the pandemic had a natural origin, and condemning the suggestion that the virus emerged in a lab as “conspiracy theories” that put scientists lives at risk. What the 27 scientists neglected to mention is that their statement was organized by Peter Daszak, a co-author of the letter who is also the president of the NGO that facilitated U.S. government funding to the lab in Wuhan that the FBI and Department of Energy have concluded is the likely source of the pandemic.
While Daszak’s Lancet letter resembled a partly savvy (and partly clumsy) effort at PR-style crisis management, a paper published in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals would be both more significant in its impact and possibly more compromised in its creation. That paper, the aforementioned “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” published in Nature Medicine, a peer-reviewed (and less prestigious) sister publication of Nature, in March of 2020, was authored by a distinguished but relatively young evolutionary biologist named Kristian Andersen, along with a number of equally accomplished virologists. The paper is filled with complex analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, but in its short abstract it stated the upshot in language even a harried consumer journalist could easily grasp: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Putting aside problems with that claim (for example, a wave-making preprint last year pointed to indications that SARS-CoV-2 was indeed made in a lab), the origins of this paper, which became a touchstone for those arguing against the lab-leak theory, were deeply unethical.
Most of the questions surrounding “Proximal Origin” concern a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference called by Fauci and joined by his boss, NIH then-Director Francis Collins, and other top scientists, including Andersen and a number of his “Proximal Origin” co-authors.
As emails obtained from Freedom of Information requests revealed, Fauci arranged the call just days after receiving an email from Andersen expressing concerns he shared with several other prominent virologists that parts of the virus looked engineered. Andersen wrote that he and a few fellow researchers “all find the [SARS-CoV-2] genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”
If that claim ever reached the public, it might have permanently altered the discourse surrounding the origins of the pandemic. But after the conversation with Fauci, it never did get out. Instead, Andersen, Holmes, and Gary (in addition to Andrew Rambaut) began circulating a draft of “Proximal Origin” three days later, making claims that contradicted the findings Andersen had presented to Fauci in his initial email less than a week prior. In a Feb. 4 email to Peter Daszak, Andersen communicated that he and his co-authors had already begun circulating drafts of a paper proposing the exact opposite—that COVID-19 had emerged naturally—which would become “Proximal Origin.”
Andersen would later explain to The New York Times that his initial conclusions were made “in a matter of days, while we worked around the clock” and the subsequent revised position was the result of “more extensive analyses, significant additional data, and thorough investigations to compare genomic diversity more broadly.” Despite this claim, however, “Proximal Origin” was written “in a matter of days,” with a draft complete by Feb. 4 and the paper accepted by Nature Medicine by March 6.
“Thank you for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper,” Andersen wrote to Fauci and Collins. “We’re happy to say that the paper was just accepted by Nature Medicine and should be published shortly (not quite sure when).”
The question about what, exactly, happened on that crucial conference call has remained a subject of intense speculation. Virtually all the sections of FOIA-released emails related to the call were redacted by the NIH, leaving large blocks of blacked-out text that remind one of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Just as suggestive, however, was the chain of events that set the conference call in motion. On the evening of Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, Fauci received an email from an NIH communications officer that contained, copied in full, a Science article published that day. The article, written by one of the magazine’s senior correspondents, Jon Cohen, explored various theories concerning the origin of the pandemic. The article made mention of the aforementioned 2015 scientific study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV’s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. This might very well have triggered the email that Fauci sent to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the subject line “IMPORTANT.”
That paper, which would later be described by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as providing a “prototype” for making SARS-CoV-2 in the Wuhan lab, evidently alarmed Fauci. In response to emails received from Fauci, Auchincloss wrote back on the evening of Feb. 1. “The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since [NIAID official] Emily [Erbelding] is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 [Potential Pandemic Pathogens] framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.” And, as it turns out, they did: The NIAID/NIH had funded the study in question.
Today, the 2015 paper resulting from that study resembles a kind of publishing Frankenstein, with a series of amendments, including an editor’s note, author correction, “Corrigendum,” and update, all stitched onto the original version. On its own, any one of these features would be noteworthy. Together, they are almost comical.
Among the amendments is a revelation that the genome produced by the study was never uploaded to GenBank, the NIH’s global database for genetic sequences. The paper also mislabeled the name of the virus created by the study, part of a pattern of oddly mislabeled papers, or of missing genomes and viruses in WIV studies related to COVID-19.
The editor’s note, published less than two weeks after “Proximal Origin” was originally published in Nature Medicine, offered readers a stern warning: “We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.” As we now have good reason to assume, it only appeared that they did because journals like Nature and The Lancet acted as gatekeepers of “the science,” while taking direction and performing public relations for Fauci, Collins, and other members of the U.S. government.
Furthermore, Nature Medicine had failed to note that the 2015 study had received U.S. government funding allocated to the WIV by EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO run then as now by Peter Daszak, the organizer of the Lancet letter.
While Fauci’s discovery of Jon Cohen’s article set off the flurry of events that would lead to “Proximal Origin,” it would be Cohen who—inadvertently, and, seemingly, involuntarily—provided the most insight into what had taken place on the decisive Feb. 1 conference call with Fauci, Andersen, and other key scientists.
In July 2020, Cohen received an email from an anonymous source, which was revealed in one of the NIH FOIA releases. In the first line of the email, the anonymous source wrote, “Hello Jon, Given your recent mentions of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 I thought you might be interested to hear the bizarre back-story of the paper ‘The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.’”
Noting the “incredibly” strange history of the “Proximal Origin” paper and the Fauci-led conference call, the anonymous source alleged that Andersen and the other writers of the paper were not its true authors. “[A]sk yourself how this group of authors, none of whom work on coronaviruses, could have such detailed arguments about why SARS-CoV-2 was not human-engineered,” the anonymous source wrote. “The answer is that they couldn’t (and didn’t)—they were schooled by the coronavirus experts on the call.”
The coronavirus experts that the anonymous source alluded to include Dutch virus researcher Ron Fouchier and his boss, Marion Koopmans, and German virologist Christian Drosten. These scientists were named in a letter issued by House Republicans, and all have ties to the lab in Wuhan. Marion Koopmans, Fouchier’s boss, is director of Erasmus University’s viroscience department, which lists EcoHealth Alliance—the funding vehicle that funneled NIH money to the lab in Wuhan—as first on its list of collaborators. According to U.S. Right to Know, the public accountability nonprofit, Christian Drosten “served on a bat conference advisory committee with the Ecohealth Alliance and Dr. Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” More importantly, they have all had a hand in developing some of the world’s most deadly lab-engineered viruses.
It was a grenade of an allegation—that the claims in the most important paper concerning the origin of the pandemic were shaped by GoF researchers who had, in some instances, partnered with the Wuhan lab. Moreover, those arguments were formulated on a call with Fauci, who had overseen NIAID, which is one of the world’s largest funders of risky virus research. This would be a conflict of interest of massive proportions.
Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of—a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source—and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story. Additionally, he forwarded the anonymous email to Kristian Andersen, writing: “Here’s what one person who claims to have inside knowledge is saying behind your backs …” (The use of the plural “backs” is interesting, as it indicates that Cohen was referring to other people mentioned in the anonymous source’s email, possibly including Fauci.)
Asked about this decision, Cohen told Tablet: “The people who have exaggerated the significance of the anonymous email—which, I will reiterate, offers no insights whatsoever about the origin of this pandemic—have used my decision to not write about the credit dispute as a cudgel, manufacturing wildly inaccurate and unfair assertions about my motives and my credibility. It speaks to the mob mentality that Twitter encourages, to the certainty some people have about the lab leak, and to the deep emotions that surround the origin debate, which too often has led to speculations pretending to be evidence.”
Nevertheless, it was Cohen’s decision to send this email to Andersen that ultimately made the email public since Andersen promptly forwarded it to Fauci, making it susceptible to a future FOIA request. Around the time that the NIH was going to remove the redactions from the anonymous source’s email, Cohen published a blog post titled “Obtain but verify,” which included the full text of the email. (Cohen told Tablet he published the post “in sync with this panel I helped organize about media coverage of origins.”)
In the post, Cohen defended his actions, and claimed that the foreboding message he sent to Andersen was a “cheeky” way of asking for a reply. However, in the original version of the “Obtain but verify” apologia, Cohen left three critical paragraphs out of the anonymous source’s email. In these paragraphs, the anonymous source claims that “Proximal Origin” was initially submitted to Nature—not its more specifically focused (and less prestigious) subsidiary, Nature Medicine. This makes sense. Given that this was a group of the world’s foremost virus researchers issuing a key paper on the origin of the worst pandemic in generations, one would expect it to appear in the largest possible outlet.
According to the anonymous source, the editor at Nature responsible for handling the submission had heard about what went on during the teleconference and had also found that the “Proximal Origin” authors had been “schooled” by scientists whose names weren’t on the paper. She, according to the tipster, then rejected the paper. When contacted for comment as to whether they would be adding Anthony Fauci to the list of contributors to the “Proximal Origins” paper, a spokesperson from Nature Medicine told Tablet:
“I hope it’s helpful to note that the publication you are referring to is a correspondence published in Nature Medicine. The correspondence section provides a forum for discussion or to present a point of view on issues that are of interest to the readership of Nature Medicine. We work with the manuscript and accompanying information as it is presented to us and all authors are expected to fulfil the criteria laid out in our authorship policy. The responsibility for reflecting substantive contributions to manuscripts through authorship lists lies with the authors themselves and we have received no communications from any researchers suggesting that their contributions have not been appropriately recognised.”
Cohen, for his part, told Tablet that he never took a position on the origins of COVID-19, and points to his publications at Science, which he says covered the “lab origin possibility and also question [the] role of the Huanan market.”
The same FOIA dump that revealed Cohen’s letter to Andersen also reveals that The New York Times’ former lead pandemic reporter, Donald McNeil, wrote a ponderous Feb. 25, 2020, email (in which he also accuses Americans of acting like “selfish pigs”) to Fauci in which he flatters the pandemic czar’s performance at a press conference. “[The] only time the tone was right [was] when you were the third to take the mike and explain things …” In another email, McNeil confesses that he has purchased not one but two Fauci bobbleheads, one for himself and one for someone whose name is, weirdly, redacted.
Fauci was not immune to the flattery, and returned it in kind. At one point he dashed off a missive to McNeil about an interview the Times reporter had conducted. “Donald: Your interview with [WHO official] Bruce Aylward was the best discussion of COVID-19 that I have seen thus far. Great job!” Fauci signed the email “Tony.”
As a product of its own hype, the science media has been granted a kind of epistemological special status on science-related issues. On matters related to science, the thinking among consumer journalists goes, surely the science writers will have more, and better, things to say. That might be true, but on issues where science, money, power and crisis collide, it almost certainly is not. And no issue brought together those four horsemen of enlightened corruption more dramatically than the COVID-19 pandemic.
JK Rowling is explaining herself. It's time her detractors listen.
Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
You'd think this would generate headlines — JK Rowling, public enemy number one of the trans community, countering her critics. But no.
Rowling offers her nuanced thoughts in this podcast, informed by voluminous reading and research and her own past as well: an abused wife, pregnant and in fear for her life, her baby, and her first Potter manuscript, which she says was held hostage by her then-husband.
As a tortured teenager who questioned her own femininity and sexuality. As a woman worried for other women who feel they are being systematically marginalized, threatened, and silenced, but who cannot afford — literally, financially — to speak up.
'Did I want to join the public conversation?' she asks. 'Yes... because I was watching women being shut down. And it was as though there was no woman perfect enough to say her piece.'
She knew well what would happen.
'There were people close to me,' she says, 'who were BEGGING me not to do it . . . they'd watched what had happened to other public figures and there was certainly a feeling of, 'This is not a wise thing to do; don't do it.'
We've never heard Rowling reveal so much of herself and her thought processes, and it's fascinating. What she has to say can't be boiled down to a tweet or a like on Instagram, and hallelujah — someone in the public square courageously demanding conversation and debate. As grown-ups should.
Apparently, the Potter books are no longer regarded as proof, so it must be said: Rowling possesses a sharp, unique, provocative mind. She is all too self-aware. She deserves much more than being treated as a caricature in much of mainstream and social media. Yet even this podcast, a valuable addition to what should be respectful and informed debate, has been dismissed in the usual outlets.
Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
'Exhausting,' said Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. Hesse couldn't point to any one thing Rowling has ever said that's transphobic, but the author, Hesse wrote, nonetheless has 'a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric.'
New York magazine, Vulture: 'Can Anyone Trust the Witch Trials of JK Rowling?' Podcast critic Nicholas Quah, after listening to just the first two episodes, decried the concept of actually letting Rowling explain herself: 'That Rowling's perspective so utterly dominates the podcast's opening stages is incredibly frustrating,' Quah writes.
Wow. The whole point of this podcast is to examine how the most beloved author of our era has become the subject — I doubt Rowling would ever use the word 'victim' — of an international witch hunt, online and off.
Would Quah have written the same sentence about a complicated, misunderstood man? Displayed — ostensibly anathema to a critic — an already closed mind?
Episode four delves into the surging rates of tweens and teens transitioning — a sudden surge in biological girls identifying as boys especially — and a medical community all too willing to put these children on puberty blockers or remove breasts or alter genitalia without comprehensive psychological evaluations.
Teenagers who later decide to de-transition face very real consequences: Biological girls face infertility. Biological boys may never experience an orgasm. But to investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic.
Frankly, that's insane. Rowling's not alone here, and there's no doubt her outspokenness is encouraging others.
Take Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
To investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic. Frankly, that's insane.
'I could no longer participate in what was happening there,' Reed wrote in the Free Press. 'By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to 'do no harm.' Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.'
Then there's former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, speaking out about the essential unfairness of competing against those born biologically male and biological female athletes no longer having their own locker rooms — their own safe space. She said last month that she has received multiple private messages of thanks and endorsement from elite male and female athletes, but is disheartened by their reluctance to go public.
'Now I realize these private thanks,' Gaines said, 'make them responsible for this continuing and advancing as it has.'
You only need to look at the faces of any female swimmer competing against Lia Thomas, a trans female, as they lose and lose again to someone with greater wingspan and lung capacity and upper body strength: The futility, the pain, the utter disconsolation at never having a chance in their chosen sport, one that required enormous personal and financial sacrifice, afraid to express their anger because the mainstream media is cheering this on as a heartwarming story.
JK Rowling is shifting the conversation. The BBC, which airs the series 'Strike' based on Rowling's adult detective novels (published under her pen name Robert Galbraith), apologized twice to the author last month for not defending her against charges of transphobia. They have renewed 'Strike' for a sixth season and have made it clear: The BBC stands with her.
In Finland, Sweden and the UK, there has been a sharp pullback on medical interventions for kids who identify as trans. Last July, Britain's National Health announced Tavistock, the UK's only clinic for transgender youth, would close in favor of new, smaller centers and protocols. Too many children, said Dr. Hilary Cass, head of the Tavistock review, are 'at considerable risk' of depression and impaired mental health. One clinic alone, Cass said, is not 'a safe or viable long-term option.'
Even The New York Times is coming around, recently publishing an op-ed titled 'In Defense of JK Rowling.'
'The campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd,' columnist Pamela Paul wrote last month. 'The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling's case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn't square with her actual views.'
Take Jamie Reed (above), a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
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Take Jamie Reed (above), a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
The notion that the Times would publish such a defense, rather than fold to woke junior staffers having philosophical seizures on Slack, would have been unthinkable a year ago. Now, top editors at the Times, it seems, have begun regenerating their spinal columns, telling staff that there is now zero tolerance for its own journalists protesting the way the Times covers this issue in all its complexity.
Thank JK Rowling. She's not just encouraging others to summon their courage. She's forcing them to admit -- she has some valid points
In this podcast episode, Rowling addresses the costs not just to biological women but to young kids. Here she shares her own private torment as a confused young girl and adolescent:
'I grew up in what I would say was quite a misogynistic household,' Rowling says. 'Like all young girls, I grew up with certain standards of beauty and ideas of femininity, and I felt I didn't fit into either of those groups. I didn't feel particularly feminine . . . I looked very androgynous at 11 and 12. I had short hair.'
She says she felt the very common anxiety young girls do as their bodies change, as they develop and get their periods, as their bodies become something boys and men observe in new ways — ways that can carry shame or ambivalence, a wish to stop what's happening.
'It's very difficult to cope with that,' Rowling says. 'I questioned my sexuality. I'm thinking, 'Well, I can tell my friends are pretty — does that mean I'm gay?' Which I think is very common. I grew up to be a straight woman, but I've never forgotten that feeling of anxiety around my body . . . Having felt like an outsider in several different ways in my life, I have a real feeling for the underdog. And I have a real feeling for people who feel that they don't fit. And I see that, hugely, particularly, among younger trans people. I can understand that feeling only too well.'
JK Rowling is speaking. The tide is turning. Will her most vehement critics begin to admit fault?
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.
The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.
The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.
Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.
“For now, there will be no floor for the age of marriage in WV, endangering our kids,” Young wrote on Twitter after the vote.
In a rebuke, Cabell County Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel reminded the committee after the vote that Wednesday was International Women’s Day.
Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.
Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
The bill would have established that 18 is the age of consent and removed the ability of a minor to obtain consent through their parents, legal guardians, or by court petition. Existing legal marriages, including those done in other states, would have been unaffected.
According to the nonprofit group Unchained At Last, which seeks to end forced and child marriage, seven states have set the minimum age for marriage at 18, all since 2018. Supporters of such legislation say it reduces domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies and improves the lives of teens.
Although recent figures are unavailable, according to the Pew Research Center, West Virginia had the highest rate of child marriages among the states in 2014, when the state’s five-year average was 7.1 marriages for every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17.
Author: Matt Pusatory (WUSA9)
Published: 12:27 PM EST March 8, 2023
Updated: 6:53 PM EST March 8, 2023
TAKOMA PARK, Md. — A Takoma Park man previously charged for vandalizing two Prince George's County libraries is now charged with possessing child pornography. Charles Sutherland faces at least seven charges of possessing child pornography, according to a charging document.
Sutherland was arrested back in June for spray painting the word "Groomer" on the front door of the Greenbelt library and the New Carrolton library during Capitol Pride Week. He faced vandalism and hate crime charges after he was arrested. Sutherland worked as a school librarian at Northview Elementary School in Bowie at the time. He has been on administrative leave since his arrest in June.
At the time, Sutherland reportedly admitted to the vandalism and allowed a search of his home, according to charging documents.
During the search, the document says officers found numerous diapers, children's dolls, and a child-sized doll in Sutherland's bed. According to Sutherland, he has no children or nieces or nephews, the documents say. He also admitted he had child pornography on a laptop in his home.
In January, a digital forensics examination of the laptop was completed and found seven files of child pornography.
It is not clear yet when Sutherland will appear in court for these charges. The investigation is ongoing.
Remember Barney Frank, gay Congressman extraordinaire, who had a homosexual prostitution ring running out of his house? Remember when he cause the collapse of several financial institutions in 2008? He's at it again:
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) sat on the board for Signature Bank which collapsed in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) implosion.
In a speech at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on Saturday, Pence cleverly said Pete Buttigieg, the first and worst openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history, took "maternity leave" while Americans faced airline problems in 2021.
"Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression," Pence said.
Amid the national showdown over drag performances and transgender rights, a storytelling event in a city park in northern Ohio became the latest flashpoint, fueled by demonstrators who waved swastika flags and shouted "Seig heil" before a melee that led to two arrests.
Hundreds of protesters, including armed white supremacists, members of several extremist groups and LGBTQ-community supporters descended on Wadsworth, Ohio, a small town outside Akron, for a drag queen storytelling show that had been moved from a private venue.
White supremacist protestors shouted "Heil Hitler" and made Nazi salutes outside the event while pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters chanted, confronted the far-right agitators and wielded rainbow-colored parasols as a sort of shield for attendees.
Toward the end of the four-hour event Saturday, two people were arrested after a series of scuffles involving pepper spray, the use of a flag pole as a weapon and a protester who, according to a witness and a video posted on social media, allegedly pulled a gun twice.
Wadsworth Police Chief Dan Chafin said Sunday he's aware of the footage of the alleged handgun but that he couldn't comment further pending an investigation.
The face-off fits within a larger national pattern of rhetoric and threats surrounding drag events. They start with unfounded or unproven allegations that drag shows "groom" children for sex abuse, and have led to escalating violence and clashes in communities nationwide.
Extremist far-right groups including the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, White Lives Matter and other white supremacists have glommed onto the anti-drag cause over the last couple of years. The weekend's event in Ohio featured a full range of these groups.
"Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression," Pence said.
From Twitter:
Chasten Buttigieg
@Chasten
An honest question for you, @Mike_Pence after your attempted joke this weekend. If your grandchild was born prematurely and placed on a ventilator at two months old - their tiny fingers wrapped around yours as the monitors beep in the background - where would you be?
---------------------
Buttigieg and his husband welcomed twins Gus and Penelope in September 2021. The Cabinet official took parental leave at the time to be with his newborns. The couple later revealed that the babies had overcome serious health struggles after contracting a respiratory virus. Gus was placed on a ventilator in a pediatric intensive care unit.
If Mike Pence ever tries to tell you he's "pro-life" again, remind him of his little "joke."
A federal manhunt is underway for Roy McGrath, once the chief of staff to ex-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, after he failed to appear in court Monday for the first day of his trial on wire fraud and embezzlement charges.
The U.S. Marshals Service launched an interstate fugitive search after a federal judge issued a warrant for McGrath's arrest. McGrath's face is plastered on a U.S. Marshals poster, which highlights charges against him for wire fraud, theft in programs receiving federal funds and falsification of records in federal investigations.
A law enforcement source tells CBS News that McGrath's family was at his home in Florida when FBI visited the house Tuesday morning. The source said his high profile and the widely circulating photos will make it difficult for him to remain at large.
McGrath was scheduled to appear in federal court in Baltimore on charges related to his tenure running the Maryland Environmental Service before joining Hogan's office as chief of staff in 2020. The 2021 indictment against McGrath says he sought to enrich himself personally by using his position as executive director of the agency and his role as chief of staff to the governor to engineer a payment from the agency he shouldn't have received. Prosecutors also allege that McGrath falsified his time sheets while he took a vacation to Europe and that he stole money for classes at Harvard. McGrath resigned from Hogan's office weeks after assuming the chief-of-staff job after an investigation found he wasn't forthcoming about the $230,000 severance package he had received for leaving the quasi-government agency, according to court filings.
McGrath, 53, has been living in Naples, Florida, and was supposed to travel to Maryland for the trial, according to court records. It's possible Hogan could testify in the trial. He was Maryland's governor from 2015 until earlier this year; he has denied knowing about or approving McGrath's severance payment.
McGrath has pleaded not guilty on all charges. His attorney, Joseph Murtha, said he doesn't know where his client is.
"Unfortunately, I have no idea of Roys's whereabouts," Murtha said. "I hope that he is safe, and that we will soon have an opportunity to speak with one another."
Murtha told CBS Baltimore's WJZ on Tuesday he has yet to hear from his client. He confirmed McGrath's wife spoke to law enforcement at the couple's home in Naples, Florida. And he said she is cooperating with the investigation and has no idea of her husband's whereabouts.
— Rob Legare, Scott McFarlane and Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.
USA Today Exclusive: Social media threats exploded after Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 claims, analysis finds
Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event on his prime-time Fox News show set off a dangerous new wave of social media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders, according to experts who monitor extremism and a report from Advance Democracy shared exclusively with USA TODAY.
The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.”
Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users who fired off threats on Twitter and in pro-Trump forums directed at politicians who have made public inquiries into the violence, especially the congressional Jan. 6 committee.
Those threats came in far greater numbers than before the broadcast, according to the Advance Democracy report.
On Twitter, posts relating to Jan. 6 using violent rhetoric increased fivefold from the previous week, the report shows.
The outpouring of violence concerns extremism experts, who said Carlson and Fox News are playing with fire by spreading disinformation that could inspire violence against the targets of their coverage.
"If there were an attack right now on one of the groups or individuals that was mentioned in Tucker's report – one of the dumping grounds for his ire – I would not be surprised at all," said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I mean, that's basically what we're expecting right now."
Threats posted online
On pro-Trump forum Patriots.win, users called for violence, with one commenting: “SOLUTION HAS NEVER CHANGED.” He added, “GALLOWS. FOR ALL OF THEM.”
Incendiary comments spread on other social media platforms such as Gab, Getter, 4chan and Trump’s own Truth Social, according to the Advance Democracy report. Violent threats included calls to lynch Jan. 6 Committee members and Democratic lawmakers such as "hang them high" and "hang 'em all."
“God does not sleep,” a Gettr user wrote. “Every one of them in the January 6 committee will have to pay for what they did.”
Streaming platforms Rumble and TikTok were also rife with incendiary talk including claims that Jan. 6 was a so-called false flag operation. (In such a case, conspiracy theorists allege, a destructive event is actually faked to pin blame on the opposite side.)
Users called for mass arrests and charges of treason against Jan. 6 Committee members, Advance Democracy found.
“Nuremberg 2.0 for the Commies and their propagandists,” one Rumble user wrote. "If not a single person is arrested for the immense corruption then there are no more peaceful solutions," another wrote.
One TikTok commenter threatened mainstream media outlets: "It’s time to burn these media outlets to the ground."
Squire said Advance Democracy's findings mirror what she and her team at SPLC are seeing on social media in the wake of Carlson's reports.
Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an expert on domestic extremism, said he also noted a significant uptick in violent and hateful rhetoric online after the Carlson piece aired.
Holt said a quick analysis showed Carlson's name, and referenced to the Jan. 6 riot increased 15-fold in the days after the segment. He said the coverage is a deliberate attempt to distort the truth and convince Fox News watchers the insurrection was not as serious as it was.
"Disagreements are at the heart of politics," Holt said. "The political process is about resolving those disagreements. But if one party of that conversation is attempting to erase what, objectively, was an attack on the democratic process itself – it's just appalling."
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
Fox News is 'promoting dangerous false narratives for ratings'
Daniel Jones, president of nonprofit research organization Advance Democracy, accused Fox News of “promoting dangerous false narratives for ratings.”
Carlson’s show last week was the highest-rated program on cable TV, reeling in nearly 3.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
“Fox News is knowingly misleading its viewers again by cherry-picking footage to suggest the events of Jan. 6 were largely nonviolent. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is telling his viewers that they have been misled," Jones told USA TODAY. "Our research found that these comments have directly led to violent threats being made against the January 6th Committee members, federal judges and others."
Carlson's report was unscrupulous by the standards of any journalist, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute.
"It is unethical and immoral to lie to people, period. And when you have as large of a platform as Fox News does, that lie causes a lot of harm," McBride said. "It is antithetical to journalism."
But what Carlson does should not be considered journalism, McBride said. As recent revelations from the Dominion Voting Machines defamation lawsuit against Fox News have shown, Carlson and many of his colleagues at Fox are engaged in a deeply cynical disinformation effort, she said.
"There's no way you can look at his (Carlson's) Jan. 6 special and conclude that he has any interest in doing journalism," McBride said.
Tucker Carlson aired Jan. 6 claims using Capitol security footage
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Carlson exclusive access to Capitol security footage from Jan. 6.
Carlson, who has spread conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack, opened the broadcast with the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump and was "a grave betrayal of American democracy."
He showed clips of rioters in the Capitol not engaged in violent activities. The released footage “demolishes the claim” that an insurrection occurred, Carlson said.
House GOP leaders promoted the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” segment. On Tuesday, the House Republican Conference tweeted: “MUST WATCH” and four siren emojis.
Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger condemned the segment as “offensive and misleading.”
Republicans split in reaction to Tucker Carlson segment
The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, criticized Fox News for depicting the Jan. 6 attack “in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.” Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Carlson’s broadcast was “dangerous and disgusting.”
The Biden administration criticized Carlson for his “false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our Constitution and the rule of law – which cost police officers their lives.”
“We also agree with what Fox News’s own attorneys and executives have now repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law: that Tucker Carlson is not credible,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew J. Bates said in a statement.
Bates was referring to the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems.
In a deposition released Tuesday, David Clark, who oversaw Fox News’ weekend programming, said he did not consider Carlson’s program a credible source of news.
According to court documents, Carlson admitted that the voter fraud claims were false.
"Tucker Carlson is not credible"
whether he is or not is nit relevant
he presented evidence and it speaks for itself
"Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event"
there were several hundred lunatics who engaged in unacceptable violence
notably, however, no one was killed or even seriously harmed by these lunatics
the damage was to property
and, more to the point, the majority of protesters weren't violent
"The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.”"
as is always the case with any group, they weren't all on the same page
those who committed violence were in the minority
"Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users"
well, it's clear some of those convicted were set up and evidence that likely would acquitted them was withheld
that should make all Americans angry
that being said, obviously, the remedy should be through legal action, not violence
"whether he is or not is nit (sic) relevant"
Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... because when there's a 5-fold increase in "media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders", well, that's just fine with conservatives. "Freedom of speech," right?
"he presented evidence and it speaks for itself"
Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... Just like when Fox News said on Monday that it “mistakenly” cropped President Trump out of a photograph that featured the accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Nothing to see here folks... just a nice picture of Donald all by himself!
"those who committed violence were in the minority"
So were the guys flying airplanes into buildings on 9/11.
Did you actually have a point?
"well, it's clear some of those convicted were set up and evidence that likely would acquitted them was withheld"
Yeah, just like it was "clear" that Trump actually won in 2020 and there was massive amounts of voter fraud.
Maybe you should check for excess lead in your water pipes... it has been known to drop IQ points off people.
"Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... because when there's a 5-fold increase in "media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders", well, that's just fine with conservatives. "Freedom of speech," right?"
you don't forsake truth just because it makes certain fringe elements angry
law enforcement can deal with death threats, which have been made by fringe actors on all sides
the fringe on the left have issued death threats against Senators and SC justices
"Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... Just like when Fox News said on Monday that it “mistakenly” cropped"
are you saying Tucker Carlson altered the video?
So you want to reclaim the frontier? Secure the few states left that are still safe for families? Preserve the prairies those wicked coastal elites scorn as “flyover county” and “Jesus Land”? You want to return to a mythical Main Street, U.S.A., where homemade apple pies cool on every windowsill and American flags fly on every porch?
Such places still exist, but there’s a new sheriff in town—and he’s wearing size 12 Lucite pleasers and a bulging spandex g-string.
If you google any small town in “red” America and the phrase “drag brunch,” you’ll find them everywhere. The plague of low cut-top-wearing locusts is devouring the dust bowl and raiding the ranchlands.
“Drag” is of course not what it used to be. The term “drag queens” no longer refers to jovial, harmless gay men in evening wear performing what used to basically be an adult clown act. They’ve been replaced by full-blown transgender women performing raunchy, X-rated stripshows as moms, grandmas, and little kids stuff dollar bills into their leather thongs.
Of course, there have always been strippers, hookers, and dirty movie theaters in every cow town on Earth—but this is something new. They never used to let little kids into regular strip clubs, first of all. And the moms never wanted to bring their kids to regular strip clubs.
Even the “Drag Brunch” craze is new—drag has officially left its traditional setting of smoky nightclubs and moved out into the daylight, for all to see.
From Helena, Montana to Des Moines, Iowa, there are hundreds of venues that can satisfy your toddler’s urge to watch men imitating women in sexually explicit ways.
One infamous 2022 “Drag a Kid to Brunch” event took place in Dallas. In it, a mortified, confused little boy is forced to walk the runway holding hands with a towering trans woman as the charming neon sign behind him screams “IT’S NOT GONNA SUCK ITSELF.” They mean lollipops, right, Mom? Right?!
In Plano, Texas last fall, an “all-ages” drag brunch attracted some unwanted attention from people who thought they lived in a conservative state. At the brunch—which was held at Ebb & Flow, an eatery in an upscale strip mall—a buffoonish man in a dress wearing cat ears sings, “My p*ssy good, p*ssy sweet, p*ssy good enough to eat,” while flashing his underwear.
In the video from the event, a four-year old girl stares in shock as the “drag” performer twerks and grinds for the ladies in attendance.
Attending Drag Brunches is only the most visible sign of how deeply the postmodern, anti-human gender ideology has penetrated into what we used to call “middle America.” The gender studies train derailment may have happened hundreds of miles away in the universities, but the toxins that were released are now pumping through the veins of all who live there.
"are you saying Tucker Carlson altered the video?"
No, I'm saying Carlson edited the videos down to the point that he showed none of the violence we all saw happen live on our televisions that day.
No one is being prosecuted for just milling around, or simply walking to the Capitol. It wasn't as if those involved in the insurrection advanced from the White House to the Capitol like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil, growling, spitting and spinning. They're being prosecuted over those moments of violence or vandalism that led to loss of life, injury and property damage.
Carlson's edited video showing no violence was broadcast to boost Murdock's bottom line by feeding lies even Carlson doesn't believe to FOX News fans who eat up FOX News lies daily.
FOX is about as far from NEWS as is possible, We know they don't believe what they preach to their audience but they keep on preaching it anyway.
Blessings for Honesty, just a few to get you started
Proverbs 12:22 - The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
Luke 16:10 - Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
Proverbs 10:9 - Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
"No, I'm saying Carlson edited the videos down to the point that he showed none of the violence we all saw happen live on our televisions that day."
the violence has already been widely viewed
the story was what the Dems have been hiding from us
they have made us a wild mob broke into the House chamber
it's hard to square that view with the scenes shown last week with the police opening the door for him
the Shaman guy said that's what happened and the Dems called him a liar
any Dem footage of this guy doing anything violent?
btw, I agree with you that those who vandalized or assaulted should have been prosecuted
but, even then, the sentences are stiff
they didn't kill anyone, and contrary to your assertion, didn't cause anyone to die
try this Bible verse:
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.
Democrats have long portrayed themselves as the great guardians of the children. In truth, they are destroying the young. The harm they’ve done to children, teens and young adults has spiked in recent years, from scaremongering about global warming to pandemic lockdowns that have unnerved a generation to teaching them a divisive, politically charged curriculum.
According to an online medical journal, the University of Calgary has determined there was a spike “in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents” during the period of “social isolation” that coincides with the pandemic lockdowns. The university conducted a meta-analysis of 42 studies representing more than 11 million pediatric emergency department visits in 18 countries, and compared “the data on visits prior to the pandemic with those that took place during the pandemic, up to July 2021.”
Researchers found “a 22% increase in children and adolescents going to emergency departments for suicide attempts, and an 8% increase in visits for suicide ideation,” even though there was “a 32% reduction in pediatric emergency department visits for any health-related reasons during the pandemic.”
And which party was almost fully responsible for forcing the young into isolation? It was the Democrats in this country and their ideological kin in others, with the encouragement and approval of their media department, who placed the young under virtual house arrest and closed schools, houses of worship, playgrounds and other settings where social interaction takes place. No wonder so many lost hope.
It’s the same side of the political spectrum that has unconscionably stunted the speech, language, social and emotional development of small children through its obsession with mask mandates.
Not everyone agrees that this is the case. There is some debate among the experts. But common sense strongly suggests that forcing an entire population to appear less human – a masked population looks like a swarm of angry monsters – and interfering with basic verbal communication will have long-lasting negative consequences on society’s youngest and most vulnerable.
Before the pandemic, the political left was busy grinding down children, their own and others, with exaggerated tales of a climate doomsday. The literal poster child for this consuming phobia is Greta Thunberg, whose parents have indulged and exploited her fear of global warming.
But she is only one of millions of young Westerners who are panicked over the climate. EdWeek reported last fall that “37% of teenagers feel anxious when they think about climate change and its effects, and more than a third feel afraid. Many also said they feel helpless and overwhelmed.” A National Public Radio guest has said that “research with children and young people around the world” found “they were distressed, that they were finding climate change terrifying.”
“We didn’t realize the depth of the feeling,” said Caroline Hickman, a lecturer at the University of Bath, told NPR. “And we didn’t realize how that was impacting on their thinking and their daily functioning.”
This is sad: A large portion of the next generation is paralyzed for no reason. Their heads have been filled with stories concocted by hysterics.
Again, who is driving the narrative that warming caused by man’s use of fossil fuels has created an existential threat? It’s not the Republicans.
The Democrats, and again we include the dominant media as well as the many institutions now under control of the left, are also responsible for changing teens’ and pre-teens names and pronouns without their parents’ knowledge, and pushing confused kids into gender changes that they’ll later regret.
They have forced a woke indoctrination on students that is intended to elicit guilt from the “privileged” who are taught to feel convicted for their “whiteness,” pursued with Marxist vigor legislation that will burden future generations with crushing debt, sexualized children too young to understand, and used them as human shields to protect and validate their lust for ever-greater political power.
President Biden has announced his support for federal legislation requiring states to allow hormone treatments and sex change operations for “transgender kids.” He blasted recent restrictions on such practices in Florida as “close to sin” and said that access to transgender medical procedures should qualify as a basic civil right.
The president’s message is dystopian on its face, but, at a deeper level of analysis, reveals the disturbing new metaphysics of the American Left, which has elevated the “transgender child” into a totem. In primitive societies, tribal cultures would use totems to connect with nature, mediate their relationship with the spirit world, and honor the categories of the masculine and the feminine. In modern America, by contrast, political activists use the “transgender child” as a post-modern totem to connect with a utopian, technologically-perfected future and to create a new category beyond man and woman. Through chemical and surgical intervention, they believe, they can smash the patriarchy and transcend the limitations of human nature.
In truth, however, these procedures will not usher in a utopia. As we are beginning to see with the first cohort of “detransitioners,” so-called “gender-affirming care” denies biological reality and often results in horrific complications and regrets. The American doctors who are performing mastectomies on healthy young girls and penectomies on healthy young boys are not the saviors of the future—they are the butchers of the present, enacting a post-modern form of child sacrifice.
Joe Biden recently proposed in an interview that he would support federal legislation to force states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee to allow doctors to perform hormone therapies and sex change operations on children. This is all under the rubric of a deeply misleading term, “trans-affirming care,” that has become a deep conviction on the political Left. I’d like to analyze the clip in which Biden is talking about this and show that, for the Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a religious totem. Let’s take a listen.
[President Biden:] Transgender kids is a really harder thing. What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, “close to sinful.” It’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, “You know, I decided I want to become a man” or “I want to become a woman” or “I want to change.” I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are, I mean, just to me is, I don’t know. It’s cruel. And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.
Let’s break that down. In a certain sense, Biden’s comment sounds reasonable, it sounds humane, it sounds fairly rational. But this is all based on manipulative language and a hidden ideology that operates under the surface.
First, the category “transgender kids”: that’s the first thing he says and he lays down the marker that that’s the category we’re talking about. But as my friend and colleague Colin Wright has pointed out, there’s no such thing as a “transgender kid.” And what Wright means by that is that a child is not innately transgender, but becomes transgender once the child enters the process of medicalization—hormones, surgeries, and other medical interventions. It’s not that they cannot have feelings of discomfort or dysphoria—that’s certainly true—but they only become transgender when adults intervene. These are parents, doctors, and psychotherapists, and then that child is put on Lupron, put on testosterone or estrogen, has the double mastectomy, or gets the penile inversion surgery.
Second, Biden then says it’s not as if kids wake up one morning and decide that they’re transgender or decide that their identity is different than their sex at biological birth. This is preposterous. That’s exactly what’s happening. We have reams of data that show this is a classic social contagion. If you look at the graph of young people identifying as transgender, it’s like the tulip bulb mania, it’s like a stock market bubble. And this has to crash. This is not sustainable. It’s not driven by a deeper reality. It’s driven by these contagious social factors. Look: for most kids, if you listen to what Biden calls their “feelings” and “inclinations,” these are fleeting. They resolve on their own, especially as they’re discovering perhaps new gender identities while they’re going through the very difficult period of puberty.
All of this boils down to the third component where Biden says that this is “close to sinful.” He’s providing a religious judgment. He says that preventing kids from undergoing hormone therapies and surgeries is the sinful act. So, any prohibition against forcing kids on the path of medicalization is considered a violation of the basic worldview of the Left. And, again, this is a moral inversion. He has it exactly backwards. In reality, it’s sinful to put kids on the path to permanent medicalization, to put kids on the path to irreversible surgeries, especially at a moment when other nations are starting to turn against that kind of unproven and deeply destructive medicine. But Biden says no, we’re going to double-down, because the people who are running policy for the president—who showed no passion for these issues in the past—are telling him that this is how you put together the coalition. This is where the energy is. This is what you have to say and what you have to commit to.
Let’s look at this. What is actually happening under the surface? What does this phenomenon mean? What does the ontological category of the “transgender child” suggest?
I think that what it means at a deeper level, at an archetypal level, is that for the political Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a totem for their political ideology. In primitive civilizations, the tribes of North America or the Aboriginal tribes in Australia used totems to connect with nature, to connect with past ancestors. They had actual totems for male and female, for the masculine and the feminine, to create these basic categories of “man” and “woman.” In our modern civilization, we’ve turned this on its head. The political Left is now using the totem of the “trans child” to connect with a metaphysics of the future, to say that any holding back from this scientific and medical future is a violation of our deepest principles.
They’re creating a new totem beyond the categories of “man” and “woman,” beyond the categories of the masculine and the feminine. Because in this new metaphysics, they believe in an ideology against Genesis. They believe in an ideology against the idea that we’ve created a world in God’s image, male and female. They believe that they can actually transcend all of this. They believe that there is a gender utopia beyond the basis of reality, beyond the basis of human nature. They believe that if we can only harness scientific progress and apply it to the repressive categories of the patriarchy, we can unleash a trans utopia beyond the world of necessity.
But in truth, of course, this is a lie. Beyond the realm of the masculine and the feminine is not a utopia. It’s a dystopia in which man is stripped from his nature and forced into these brutal medical procedures, then, as we’re already seeing with “detransitioners,” stripped of the basic building blocks of reality and human dignity.
At the end of this road, what we’re seeing is that the political Left is willing to engage in child sacrifice—removing the breasts of healthy young women, and, as we know from the medical literature, castrating young boys, removing their penis, and then transforming it into what they call a “neo-vagina,” or an artificial vaginal cavity, which has just horrific medical consequences, in a way, almost reminiscent of the Aztec child sacrifice rituals. We’re castrating kids in service of a political ideology that uses them as totems to move humanity into the new left-wing metaphysics. It’s something that we’re going to see in the next few years yielding horrific consequences, dystopian consequences, because it’s fundamentally at war with the reality of the universe, the reality of human nature. It cannot stand.
Conservatives have to be tough and, with our friends on the Left who are revolted by this ideology, must have the strength of conviction to know that this metaphysics is ultimately going to backfire. And we cannot back down one inch because we have the moral high ground, we have the metaphysical high ground. I know that, in the future, despite the folksy rhetoric of people like Joe Biden, we’ll have the political high ground as well, as long as we fight this fight on principle. If we protect these kids from these experiments, then we will ultimately conform our politics to the basic nature of reality.
The above diatribe was brought to you by an eloquent but deluded conservative desperately looking for a justification to ignore the past 70 years of medical science in the treatment of trans people.
My conservative father had a quote printed on business cards: "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."
This will take a couple of shovels.
Trans kids have nothing to do with metaphysics, native totems, or even left vs. right. This is about parents being allowed to get the best medical treatment known to modern science.
The problem is that the Christian right has never believed in science, and they'll twist any argument, rule, judge, or politician any way necessary to get their pre-determined outcome.
Their war on trans children won't end with children either, just like ending Roe v. Wade hasn't ended with "the states deciding." Once they eliminate trans children, adults will be next.
With a Manhattan grand jury indictment likely but its timing unclear, Donald J. Trump sought to rally supporters to his side, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday and calling for protests.
Mr. Trump made the declaration on his site, Truth Social, at 7:26 a.m. on Saturday in a post that ended with, “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
"With a Manhattan grand jury indictment likely but its timing unclear, Donald J. Trump sought to rally supporters to his side, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday"
to Dems have a need to fail?
doing this will make him a martyr to his supporters
Trump is currently leading polls for the 2024 GOP nomination
arresting and trying the opponent of the party in power is something that happens in Russia
his crime? paying an affair to stay quiet
not exactly a threat to society
let the voters weigh in at the ballot box
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