CPAC speaker says: 'Transgenderism must be eradicated'

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PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. – The Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor saw the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference known as (CPAC) wrapping up Saturday with twice-impeached former President Donald Trump as its closing speaker.

Trump, who overwhelmingly won CPAC’s conference straw poll for presidential contenders, garnering 62 percent support from attendees compared to 20 percent for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis an undeclared potential candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, and who is considered Trump’s biggest threat in a primary, took aim at America’s transgender community in his speech.

Trump defended his administration’s ban on transgender enlistment in the U.S. Armed Services: “We banned transgender insanity from our military,” he said, among other policies that President Joe Biden revoked upon taking office.

“We will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said. “How ridiculous. That will take place on day one.”

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) made similar comments during his remarks on Thursday. Democrats, Scott said, have sought to “allow public schools to ignore parents and talk to very young children about sexuality.”

The Senator also claimed the U.S. military has been made to care more about “pronouns” than intimidating our enemies.

Trump was among numerous CPAC speakers taking aim at the culture war over LGBTQ+ equality and rights, specifically trans rights. “The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of 9. The problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true. If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire said.

Knowles’ assertion was echoed by his fellow Daily Wire host Matt Walsh who tweeted: “He is of course completely right about this. Trangenderism as a concept and an ideology is false, poisonous, and destructive to both the individual and society. It needs to be destroyed entirely. The fight to save children from this lunacy is but one phase in the overall war.”

He is of course completely right about this. Trangenderism as a concept and an ideology is false, poisonous, and destructive to both the individual and society. It needs to be destroyed entirely. The fight to save children from this lunacy is but one phase in the overall war. https://t.co/vn2YpIjiLW

As outrage built online after Knowles’ assertion, Walsh on Sunday tweeted: “Trans activists have worked for years to fundamentally restructure human society to affirm their deluded self-perceptions. They have censored, silenced, indoctrinated, and manipulated. They have harmed children. Now the pushback is finally here in and they cry victim.”

Trans activists have worked for years to fundamentally restructure human society to affirm their deluded self-perceptions. They have censored, silenced, indoctrinated, and manipulated. They have harmed children. Now the pushback is finally here in and they cry victim.

Walsh also asserted on Twitter: “Of course all of the hysterical idiots calling this language “genocidal” would certainly not be saying that if he has called for the eradication of capitalism or conservatism or some other -ism they don’t like. In that case they’d easily recognize that working to defeat an ideology is not the same as eradicating individuals. This is a distinction any intelligent person can understand. Gender ideology (I.e. transgenderism) is just that: an ideology. And that is what we are fighting.”

“Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life, entirely”:

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is among those who also spoke.

CPAC endorses eliminationist rhetoric

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Florida backs down, AP Psychology course will be taught unaltered

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The notorious One Million Moms is claiming Aveeno Kids is currently using a young boy in an advert to “help push the gay agenda”

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TUPELO, Ms. – A leading national anti-LGBTQ+ group, The American Family Association, (AFA) listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a ‘Hate’ group for its lies and propaganda about LGBTQ+ rights and expression, pornography, and people is attacking Aveeno Kids shampoo company over its Aveeno Kids advert.

The notorious One Million Moms ‘division’ of the AFA headed by AFA’s Monica Cole sent out a newsletter and posted to the group’s website claiming Aveeno Kids is currently using a young boy in its 45 second social media, television and streaming commercial to “help push the gay agenda.”

Complete text of the post by Monica Cole:

Aveeno Kids is currently using a young boy in its commercial to help push the gay agenda. The male child is depicted using Aveeno Kids shampoo during bath time. Then, he is shown playing in what appears to be an astronaut costume with a pastel, rainbow-striped tutu added on top of his astronaut ensemble. This ad furtively advocates for the LGBTQ lifestyle.

By featuring a supposedly nonbinary child, Aveeno Kids has introduced a controversial marketing campaign they should have avoided. In fact, the focus of the commercial is gender dysphoria and not the product itself.

Unfortunately, the initial victim of this disgusting commercial is the young boy cast in this ad, not to mention any child who views the commercial. The sexualization and moral corruption of these children are examples of child exploitation at its worst. No child should be introduced to the experience of mental disorders through a commercial.

Evidently, the use of gender fluid and non-binary characters in mainstream television commercial is the next step in normalizing a culture that dissociates a person’s biological gender from their “gender identity.”

Yet, DNA proves a female is female and a male is male. There is no gray area here and no such thing as “gender fluid.” Confusing young viewers and child cast members with gender dysphoria is destructive. Aveeno Kids is glorifying gender dysphoria, also known as gender identity disorder, and using a child to promote this mental disorder.

For clarification, Dictionary.com describes gender dysphoria as “a psychological condition marked by a significant emotional distress and impairment in life functioning, caused by lack of congruence between gender identity and biological sex assigned at birth.”

Aveeno Kids from Sarofsky. Beautifully made. on Vimeo.

Equality Florida spokesperson says Orlando Magic $50K donation to DeSantis ‘Incredibly Disappointing’ Team is owned by relative of Betsy DeVos

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ORLANDO, Fla. — The owners of Central Florida’s men’s pro basketball team are on defense following revelations that they donated $50,000 to the super PAC raising money for the Gov. Ron DeSantis presidential campaign.

“It’s incredibly disappointing that the Orlando Magic has chosen to publicly align themselves with his brand of right-wing extremism,” said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the LGBTQ civil rights group Equality Florida, and a survivor of the 2016 Pulse massacre. “This is really a moment for those businesses who declare their values of inclusion so loudly to make those values actually mean something.”

On Thursday, the players’ union issued a statement on its website calling the NBA team’s donation to the DeSantis White House campaign “alarming.”

“A political contribution from the Orlando Magic is alarming given recent comments and policies of its beneficiary,” the group said, meaning Florida’s governor.

“NBA governors, players and personnel have the right to express their personal political views, including through donations and statements. However, if contributions are made on behalf of an entire team, using money earned through the labor of its employees, it is incumbent upon the team governors to consider the diverse values and perspectives of staff and players.

“The Magic’s donation does not represent player support for the recipient,” said the National Basketball Players Association.

A statement from the NBPA on the Orlando Magic’s recent political donations.Official statement: https://t.co/6fmRZCxVzG pic.twitter.com/JQEk0V4Ztl

Florida State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) called her hometown team’s move baffling, CNN reported.

“Gov. DeSantis has based his entire political career on targeting, demonizing and taking away health care from LGBTQ+ people, including youth,” she said. “It’s incredibly disheartening that a team that markets itself as being welcoming to all people, behind the scenes, gives $50,000 to a DeSantis PAC.”

As The New York Times reported, the donation highlights repeated efforts by the billionaires who own NBA teams to undermine the league’s public stance in support of progressive causes, such as reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights and criminal justice reform.

The vast majority of NBA players are Black, as NBC News reported. NBA Commissoner Adam Silver told The Undefeated in 2016 that he felt a “particular obligation to focus on the African-American community in that we have a league that is roughly 75 percent African-American. And I feel part of the obligation comes from the history of this league that I’ve inherited.”

History, particularly the teaching of history of slavery, has become a flashpoint in Florida in recent weeks, with DeSantis defending a new curriculum that claims Blacks benefited from their enslavement by developing skills like blacksmithing. His administration has also banned advanced placement psychology classes in high schools, criminalized the use of public bathrooms by transgender people and stripped the state of gender-affirming care for children and adults. And of course, there’s also the state’s expanded “Don’t Say Gay” law banning any mention of LGBTQ+ life in schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.

In the case of the Magic, the team is owned by Dan DeVos, brother-in-law of the transphobic former Secretary of Education in the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos.

When asked for an explanation, the team itself dribbled, until finally issuing a statement Thursday.

“No member of the DeVos family has endorsed or offered financial support to any 2024 Presidential candidate at this point,” Nick Wasmiller, a DeVos family spokesperson, told CNN in an email. “They are undecided.”

“To clarify, this gift was given before Governor DeSantis entered the presidential race. It was given as a Florida business in support of a Florida governor for the continued prosperity of Central Florida.”

However, according to a report by CBS Sports, records from the Federal Elections Commission show the team’s donation was received on June 26, more than one month after DeSantis announced his run for president, on May 24. The team claims its check was dated May 19, which would be prior to DeSantis’ official announcement, but long after reports about his plans to run for president.

As of press time, the DeSantis campaign and its super PAC, Never Back Down, has not responded to media inquiries.

Many young voters across the Democratic ideological spectrum said substantive representation was more important to them

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America’s leadership is older than ever but its electorate is younger than ever. Will Gen Z turn out in 2024 for the elderly Democratic president?

By Gabe Fleisher | WASHINGTON – America’s political gerontocracy was on full display last week, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, appeared to experience a medical episode during a press conference and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, had to be repeatedly told how to vote on a key bill.

On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, White House aides have been making changes to President Biden’s schedule and routine to adapt for his age. At 80, he is the oldest president in American history and one of the oldest heads of government in the world; meanwhile, the current U.S. Congress is the third-oldest in history.

But, at the same time as older politicians are making up a growing proportion of the government, younger voters are making up a growing proportion of the electorate. According to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, in the four election cycles in which Generation Z has been eligible to vote, youth voter turnout has been up 25% compared to the previous nine cycles.

Largely due to that soaring turnout, in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections, the Gen Z vote was critical to the results, giving young voters a power over politics they have rarely wielded throughout history.

This fundamental mismatch — leaders grayer than ever and voters greener than ever — is at the heart of American politics right now. It will also be central to the next election: if Biden’s advanced age leads even a small percentage of young voters who supported him in 2020 to stay home or vote against him in 2024, it could be decisive.

As Harvard’s John Della Volpe recently noted, in this century, whenever Democratic presidential candidates have received at least 60% of the youth vote (Obama in 2008 and 2012; Biden in 2020), they have won the election. Whenever they have received less than 60% (Gore in 2000; Kerry in 2004; Clinton in 2016), they have lost.

Over the weekend, about 275 members of this sought-after voting bloc gathered at the famed Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., for a summit hosted by Voters of Tomorrow, a prominent left-leaning Gen Z group.

The speakers were a mix of young and old, and their tones varied dramatically by generation. Democratic Party eminence Nancy Pelosi, 83, a self-described “voter of yesterday,” was the first to address the group. “We cannot be fearmongers. We don’t want to go out there and say, ‘Blah blah blah blah,’” she said during her remarks, mimicking a nagging voice.

Pelosi was followed by New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, 47, who was greeted with a hero’s welcome. “Wassup wassup!” he said as he took the stage. While Pelosi’s speech closed with a paean to the national anthem, Bowman took a different tack. “As you know, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers, they did great things, but they were fundamentally flawed,” he said. (Later, at a different session of the conference, when a speaker asked how many of the attendees described themselves as “patriotic,” only a scattering of hands went up.)

Ignoring Pelosi’s warning against fearmongering, Bowman focused his speech not on legislation, but on the ills facing the country right now. “A new American Revolution” is underway, he declared, led by Gen Z. Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, 26, similarly invoked Gen Z as a bulwark against the “far-right-wing fascist movement growing in this country.”

Notably, unlike old-guard institutionalists like Pelosi, many of the younger speakers offered almost as many criticisms of the Democratic Party as they did Republicans. “People have been beaten down by our system,” Bowman said. “By design, by the way. And not just Republicans. Democrats have been guilty of this too.” The statement was met by loud cheers and applause from the largely Democratic audience.

“I used to joke with people, if I didn’t run for something else, I was going to leave the Democratic Party,” North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton, 25, said, adding that her goal is to “make people feel like this party gives a damn about them again.”

That skeptical attitude is shared among many young voters. Several of the conference attendees told me they felt much less attached to a political party than their parents. Polling bears this out as well: John Della Volpe, the Harvard pollster, recently wrote that his surveys show declining numbers of young Americans are identifying as Democrats, paying close attention to the news, or describing politics as a “meaningful way to create change in the system.”

Those metrics, he said, were some of the ones that indicated strong Democratic performance ahead of the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections; now, he views them as “flashing red” warning signs for Democrats ahead of 2024.

“I think that Trump’s election in ’16 and the aftermath in ’17 showed the concrete ways in which politics can impact people’s lives,” Della Volpe told me in an interview. “And I think that for young people who aren’t paying as close attention to the news as others, I think they’re struggling to find similar concrete examples of government making a meaningful difference in their lives, and that’s driving the cynicism.”

“[Young] people are really apathetic right now to voting,” Clayton, the youngest state party chair in the country, told me. “They don’t believe their vote actually matters. And I think that part of what we have a job to do as a party is to ensure people know that we care about them again, because I feel like part of why people don’t vote right now is they’re like, ‘I don’t see myself represented in the Democratic Party.’”

Among young voters, views on the effectiveness of working through the political system to create change almost perfectly mirror views on the Biden presidency. In Della Volpe’s latest Harvard polling, 58% of 18-to-29-year-olds agreed with the statement “politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing,” a 27-point increase since 2018. 61% of young voters in the same poll said they disapproved of Biden’s job performance.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the two metrics are moving in tandem. Biden, after all, is a 50-year veteran of elected office; he is as much an avatar for the political system, and the belief that change can be made through compromise, as anyone alive today. Supporting Biden also represents a compromise in itself for young Democrats, who overwhelmingly voted against him in the 2020 primaries.

As with any youth movement, pragmatists and idealists could be found in equal measure at the Voters of Tomorrow summit. One attendee joked to me that the more dressed-up someone at the summit was, the more you could tell they were planning to run for office one day (or that they were already officeholders). Mirroring the Democratic divide in which the party’s leaders are gung-ho for Biden 2024 while its voters are hesitant about him seeking re-election, I found these aspiring pols in suit jackets much more amenable to the president than their aspiring activist counterparts.

“They’re doing outreach, their messaging is doing very well… It’s not on all issues. We don’t agree with them on everything, obviously,” Quentin Colón Roosevelt, a 19-year-old local commissioner in D.C. and Theodore Roosevelt’s great-great-great grandson, told me of the Biden campaign. “But I think they’ve done a really good job so far, making sure we feel included in their campaign.”

“To paraphrase Milton Friedman, we’re all Bidenists now,” another office-seeking young attendee told me.

But over in the non-Milton-Friedman-quoting sector of the summit, Biden wasn’t quite so popular. “Definitely, in Gen Z, there is a lack of confidence in Biden’s capabilities to solve certain issues, particularly things like climate change,” Odessa Hotte, a 21-year-old student at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me. “There’s so many people saying, ‘Oh, he’s doing great, he’s doing great,’ and we’re sort of looking at it as, well, actually, there’s been some good things, but there’s also a lot that’s left to be desired.”

“I personally am not a huge fan of Biden, and I wasn’t when he was elected, either,” Hotte added, although she said she will “probably” support him in the 2024 election.

Asked if she believed young voters were enthusiastic about Biden, Anderson Clayton, the 25-year-old state party chair, said: “You know what’s so funny, someone earlier asked me that. They said, ‘I’ve asked every person at this conference and they’ve said no.’”

But Clayton, who is tasked with delivering the Democrats’ long-held hopes of flipping North Carolina, insisted that she is excited. “I think that Joe Biden is doing everything that he can right now and anything that a Democrat could do right now, honestly, to advance and move our country forward,” she told me.

Santiago Mayer, the 21-year-old founder of Voters of Tomorrow, acknowledged in an interview that differing “theories of change” and opinions on Biden existed among attendees at the summit. “I think that’s what’s so beautiful about this space,” he said, “that we can have all those differing philosophies, all those differing views, and still come together because we share the same goals.”

But at times, the differences commingled uncomfortably. With 12 million social media views and counting, perhaps the most viral moment from the summit — and the moment that best represented the generational divide in the Democratic Party right now — took place during White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s remarks.

Jean-Pierre, 48, was extolling Biden’s climate record when an attendee, 21-year-old Elise Joshi, stood up to interrupt her. “Excuse me for interrupting, but asking nicely hasn’t worked out,” Joshi said, before calling on the Biden administration to stop approving new oil and gas pipelines, an issue that has led to some of the biggest clashes between Biden and young voters.

“Let her talk, let her talk,” Jean-Pierre said when a conference organizer quickly approached Joshi. Eventually, when other attendees began to speak (“Declare a climate emergency!”) and snaps and applause broke out for the hecklers, Jean-Pierre ended the exchange.

“This is not a call and response. This is me actually delivering a speech to all of you,” Jean-Pierre said, adding: “This is a president who has had a climate change agenda like no other.”

“Promises kept, that’s all I’m asking,” Joshi said before sitting down.

Mayer told me that Voters of Tomorrow shares some of Joshi’s concerns, but that “we are very proud of President Biden’s climate record.” Jean-Pierre handled the back-and-forth “perfectly,” he added, expressing gratitude for the “administration’s partnership.” (Joshi is the executive director of her own youth voter group, Gen Z for Change. The group, notably, was founded with the name TikTok for Biden and has also worked with the White House in the past.)

In a sign of some of the same divergences in tone I noticed during their speeches, several young elected officials later tweeted in support of Joshi after the exchange. “We are running out of time,” Frost, the first Gen Z congressman, wrote. “We can’t afford to approve projects that will increase emissions. Every move should bring us to net zero. Our humanity depends on it. @EliseJoshi is a patriot.”

“I think it can feel overwhelming to feel like the burden is on our shoulders to solve all of these problems [connected to climate change],” Hotte said. “I think that’s maybe where some of that pessimism is stemming from, just from feeling like there’s so much to do and so little time.”

At one point in the summit, Generational Lab founder Cyrus Beschloss, 26, conducted an informal straw poll of which issue mattered most to the audience. More than half of the hands went up for climate change. No other issue garnered anywhere close to as much support.

According to the Harvard Youth Poll, in 2013, 29% of 18-to-29-year-olds agreed with the statement “Government should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth.” 50% of 18-to-29s believe that today.

In political science, scholars refer to two types of political representation: “descriptive” and “substantive.” Descriptive representation is when an officeholder shares the identity of a certain group; substantive representation is when an officeholder shares the group’s views on policy.

I opened the newsletter by referring to an absence of descriptive representation, which young voters obviously lack from Biden and other elderly politicians. But without using the exact term, many young voters across the Democratic ideological spectrum told me substantive representation was more important to them anyway. The age of a candidate matters, but their policies matter a lot more.

It is these voters Biden will have to persuade in 2024 that he has done enough to satisfy their demands on climate and other issues — and that electoral politics are worth engaging with in the first place. “I think it’s been a challenge for an analog president to communicate with a digital generation,” Della Volpe, who advised the Biden 2020 campaign, said.

The challenge is made harder by Gen Z’s nuanced political identity: more likely than adults to hold left-leaning political views, but less likely than adults to identify with the left-leaning political party. Unlike their more politically tribal parents, many young voters view themselves as proudly unmoored from any candidate or party. At one point, Clayton, a Democratic Party official, described the Democratic Party merely as “the party we find ourselves in,” suggesting more of a temporary alliance than permanent membership.

“I really care that the Republicans don’t win the White House,” Grace Wankelman, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of Denver, told me, “but I also don’t want to just blindly support the other party… We’re gonna vote on issues that matter to us and make sure that the politicians that say they support these issues, that they follow through and actually show up and do what needs to be done.”

****************************************************************************************

Gabe Fleisher is an award-winning journalist and editor-in-chief of Wake Up to Politics, a non-partisan political newsletter that he founded in 2011.

The preceding post was previously published by Wake Up to Politics, and is republished with permission.

If you’re interested in subscribing to the newsletter subscribe here. If you want to contribute to support Gabe’s work, please donate here.

McBride was first elected to Delaware’s senate in 2020, winning by a landslide in a heavily Democratic district, securing 73% of the vote

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WILMINGTON, Del. – Democratic State Senator Sarah McBride, who represents the First State Senate District which includes President Biden’s hometown, spoke with senior NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker Monday on her historic run for the U.S. House.

McBride, 32, who is transgender, was first elected to Delaware’s state legislature in 2020, winning by a landslide in a heavily Democratic district, securing 73% of the vote. She was re-elected in 2022. Now seeking the First State’s sole seat in the U. S. House of Representatives, McBride, if successful, would be the first transgender person elected to Congress.

In a poll released this past week, Trump leads with 52.4%, over DeSantis with 15.5% and the rest of the current GOP field at under 10%

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DES MOINES, IA. – Thirteen Republican presidential candidates attended the Iowa GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines Friday night. While most of the evening’s focus was the sparring between GOP front-runner Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former Vice-President Mike Pence stuck to his hardline conservative social policies including stating he would reinstitute a ban on military service by trans Americans.

According to a FiveThirtyEight poll released this past week, Trump leads with 52.4%, over DeSantis with 15.5% and the rest of the current GOP field at under 10% in the race for the party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention scheduled to be held July 15 to 18, 2024 at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Each candidate was slotted 10 minutes to speak at the Republican party fundraiser, after which at the 10 minute mark the microphone was to be turned off. The speaking order for the event was in order save for Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who skipped the fundraiser as he focuses on New Hampshire:

In his remarks to the more than 1,200 people in the huge ballroom the former vice-president said:

“We can embrace our role as leader of the free world to confront Russian aggression and Chinese provocations with a new military fitted to the challenges in the 21st century. And we can end the political correctness at the Pentagon, including reinstituting a ban on transgender personnel in the United States military.”

That brought cheers from the audience.

Motivated by bigotry & desire to appeal to the GOP extremists more than 40 anti-LGBTQ+ amendments on 12 appropriations bills were passed

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WASHINGTON – House Republicans’ amendments to recently passed defense spending bills, including controversial anti-LGBTQ provisions, are largely unpopular according to findings from a nationwide survey of 1,254 likely voters conducted by Data for Progress.

The left-leaning think tank published the results of its poll on Tuesday, less than a week before lawmakers will return to their districts for congressional recess in August, setting up a showdown in the U.S. Senate over appropriations bills whose passage by the lower chamber’s Republican majority ignited tensions with Democratic members in recent weeks.

“Motivated by bigotry and the desire to appeal to the GOP extremist base, more than 40 anti-equality provisions across the 12 appropriations bills were passed,” U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in a statement on behalf of the Congressional Equality Caucus, which he chairs.

“Last week, they went even further and cut millions of dollars in funding for member’s community projects that would have tackled LGBTQI+ homelessness and housing insecurity,” the congressman, who also serves on the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the Committee’s top Democrat and a member of the Equality Caucus, noted that appropriations bills “are statements of our priorities and our values as a country.”

“To that end, the majority has shown they have no values, and no priorities, and are solely focused on how to appease their most extreme caucus members, to greenlight discrimination and impose second-class status on LGBTQ+ Americans, and to defund American workers, seniors, families, and veterans,” said the congresswoman.

Democrats’ majority control of the Senate, while narrow, will create a difficult path for passage of the 40 anti-LGBTQ provisions House Republicans have attached to the 12 separate spending bills, along with other GOP amendments such as those restricting reproductive rights and diversity initiatives.

With respect to riders targeting the LGBTQ community in the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House last week, the Data for Progress poll found 60 percent of respondents “agree that anti-LGBTQ+ measures should not be included in bills focused on military spending” while 63 percent said transgender service members should have access to medically necessary healthcare.

A majority of likely voters, 51 percent, objected to language prohibiting military reimbursements for service members to obtain out-of-state abortions, expenses that are currently covered under existing policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.

For months, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has held hostage hundreds of military promotions and confirmations that remain languishing before the Senate in a bid to pressure the Department to end this policy.

Republican leadership in the chamber, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have refused to back Tuberville, whose blockade President Joe Biden has denounced as “irresponsible” and a threat to national security.

“I do not know if litigation will be brought,” one expert said adding “this sounds more like a political stunt”

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TALLAHASSEE – As sales continue to slump after months of conservative backlash against Bud Light’s social media spot with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced he will explore a potential lawsuit against the beer brand’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“It appears to me that AB InBev may have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders,” DeSantis said in a letter shared on Twitter Friday outlining possible grounds for legal action on behalf of the shareholders of Florida’s pension funds.

Columbia University Law School Professor John Coffee, however, told the Washington Blade a legal doctrine called the business judgment rule “fully protects the board of Anheuser-Busch InBev from any liability for breach of fiduciary duty that might be asserted by Florida’s pension funds in a derivative suit.”

Caselaw directs courts to uphold decisions by company directors provided they are made in good faith, with the care expected of a reasonably prudent person, and with the reasonable belief that they were acting in the corporation’s best interests.

Multinational drink conglomerate AB InBev suffered financially as a result of Bud Light’s promotion with Mulvaney, with sales for the brand down 25 percent from last year according to market research data reported by CNBC.

“No doubt, Anheuser-Busch lost money because of the populist reaction to the use of a transgender ‘influencer,’ but that is not the standard for liability,” said Coffee, who is recognized as one of the country’s leading experts in securities law, corporate governance, white collar crime, complex litigation, and class actions.

Directors “were seeking to promote their product with a new audience, and it backfired, but that is not a breach of duty,” he said, adding, “Management has the legal right to innovate and try new tactics.”

Andrew Isen, founder and president of WinMark Concepts, agreed, telling the Blade, “Bud Light is an entry beer because of the price point,” so it made sense for the beer maker to target the younger demographics who comprise the influencer’s sizable online following.

“No one foresaw this backlash,” he said.

“They’re making business decisions, they’re making marketing decisions, to grow their business, and that’s what their responsibilities to their shareholders are,” said Isen, whose clients are mostly large publicly traded corporations.

Additionally, he said, partnering with an LGBTQ public figure like Mulvaney makes sense from a market research perspective.

For instance, Isen pointed to data from management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which found that “for five years, our research has shown a positive, statistically significant correlation between company financial outperformance and diversity, on the dimensions of both gender and ethnicity.”

Coffee, who has repeatedly been listed among The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America and topped rankings of the most-cited scholars in corporate and business law, told the Blade he is not aware of any previous cases in which a firm’s marketing or advertising decision provided grounds for shareholder litigation for breach of fiduciary duty in a derivative suit.

“I do not know if litigation will be brought,” he said, adding, “this sounds more like a political stunt.”

If DeSantis’s probe leads to an actual complaint on behalf of shareholders, Coffee said, “I would not expect it to survive a motion to dismiss in Delaware,” if AB InBev is headquartered in the state, where most commercial disputes are adjudicated.

“But the suit might be brought [improperly] in Florida,” Coffee said, “and anything might happen there.”

Regardless, Coffee said, “Gov. DeSantis will make no friends in the business community with these over broad attacks.”

DeSantis, addressing shareholders of his state’s pension funds, wrote in his letter on Friday that, “We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling.”

AB InBev is just the latest target of the governor’s crusade against “wokeism” in corporate America, a battle that his party is increasingly waging against companies’ environmental and social governance policies, their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and their criticism of conservative policies or policymakers.

Firms like Blackstone had come to understand concepts like responsible environmental stewardship and diversity in corporate boards of directors as intrinsic values that are good for business and “integral to their shareholders,” Isen said, referring to the investment management juggernaut that boasts more than $991 billion in assets under management.

However, as these moves come under fire from various factions on the right — intimidation by elected leaders, coordinated online attacks, incendiary coverage in partisan media — the business community is taking notice. Isen pointed to “the amount of companies that are getting rid of their diversity officers,” as reported last week in The Wall Street Journal.

This “noise,” Isen said, is “scaring companies to death.”

Other state officials have recently weaponized the power of their governments against companies over their support for the LGBTQ community. On July 5, seven Republican state attorneys general issued a letter to Target Corp. notifying the retailer that certain merchandise in its seasonal Pride collection may violate their obscenity statutes.

The popularity of DeSantis’s attacks on “woke” corporations will soon be tested as the governor heads into Republican primary races in hopes of securing his party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

DeSantis’s office did not respond to written questions or provide comment for this story.

Regardless of the legislative strategy, the panelists agreed changing the culture of America to take on a Christian biblical worldview

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By Kelcie Moseley-Morris | DOUGLASVILLE, GA. – An all-male panel of anti-abortion religious leaders from around the country met Friday night to discuss the strategies that should be used to end abortion in every state at any stage of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape and incest, and with criminal punishment for the pregnant person in line with existing criminal penalties for murder, which includes the death penalty.

The panel was part of a week-long series of events hosted by Operation Save America, an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim religious group that wants all Americans to follow “God’s law” and their interpretation of the Christian gospel.

Many of the events were held in Douglasville, Georgia, at Pray’s Mill Baptist Church, which broke away from the Southern Baptist Convention for supposed acceptance of liberal social justice views regarding race and gender. Tuesday through Friday, the group started its mornings by protesting outside of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic near Atlanta.

Friday’s speakers included Wisconsin-based Operation Save America Director Jason Storms and former OSA director Rusty Thomas, along with Arizona-based End Abortion Now communications director Zachary Conover, Georgia Right to Life President Ricardo Davis, and Gabriel Rench, a member of the extremist Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

The theme of OSA’s national event was unity, and highlighted divisions within anti-abortion circles over what they described as the proper approach and response to legislation that seeks to limit or entirely restrict abortion procedures. The moderator of the panel, Derin Stidd, opened by asking, “Why do you all hate women?” to which the men laughed.

Rench then joked about not giving the microphone to Conover and said, “We don’t give him a voice like women,” then added, “Bad joke.”

The comments were in jest, but in line with remarks from OSA speakers throughout the week, including another comment from Rench, who said the church was wrong to allow women to be preachers.

On Thursday, anti-Islam speaker Raymond Ibrahim said, “If you look at a country, and the best they can come up with for a president is a woman, there’s something wrong about that. That doesn’t mean women aren’t smart or capable, I believe that, but if the very best — the crème de la crème — is a woman, that tells me something about the men when it comes to positions of authority and leadership.”

The panel focused on legislation they call “equal protection” bills, such as Georgia’s House Bill 496, also called the Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which was introduced in February but did not advance in the state’s House of Representatives. An “equal protection” bill, by their definition, is one that adds criminal penalties to a pregnant person for the intentional termination of a pregnancy at any stage, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The law would make an exception if the abortion was performed to prevent the pregnant person’s “imminent death or great bodily injury.”

Storms said OSA has advocated for similar bills in more than a dozen states, including Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, Kentucky and Oklahoma. So far, no states have passed an “equal protection” bill, but several, including Georgia, did pass what anti-abortion advocates call “heartbeat bills” that ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant. Those who advocate for “equal protection” bills call themselves “abolitionists,” co-opting language from the movement to abolish slavery, while the “pro-life” community has advocated for more politically expedient bills like six-week bans. Storms and other panelists called the six-week bans weak, even though they expressed understanding of political environments that make “equal protection” bills unlikely to become reality.

Rench said that is the case in Idaho, where many members of the state legislature are part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The church has taken an official position that rape and incest exceptions are acceptable, and bills that have not included those exceptions, such as one introduced by OSA-endorsed Sen. Scott Herndon of Sandpoint, have gone nowhere in the Idaho Legislature. Christ Church and its followers have taken an approach they dubbed “smashmouth incrementalism,” which acknowledges that change can be achieved through gradual reformation and repentance in the country’s culture.

But Rench said he intends to keep working with Herndon and others to bring equal protection bills back in the next legislative session to keep pushing for it, even though he thinks there is still injustice with criminal penalties for the pregnant person.

“What happens when you pass an abolition bill, a woman goes to trial, and then she goes to life in prison? That’s just as wicked,” Rench said. “Life in prison is just as wicked as everything else, so you’re solving one side of the equation, acting like we did a good job, but we locked that woman up in prison for 99 years like a monkey, and we’re still not treating her like a person.”

Davis, president of Georgia Right to Life, said his organization will push for their bill again in the next session as well, and said he’s confident they’ll get it done the next time around.

Thomas, who was a longtime director of Operation Save America before Storms, said incremental steps like “heartbeat” bills were “a lie from the pit of hell” from the very beginning, but the organization didn’t used to be politically involved because there was too much compromise and too much that needed to be changed.

Thomas said it wasn’t until pastor Matthew Trewhella, who co-founded the Milwaukee-based group Missionaries to the Preborn and is Storms’ father-in-law, wrote “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates” that he felt like there could be progress. The book references history and biblical theology to argue that governments deemed “tyrannical” and ungodly can and should be defied. Trewhella has said he has spoken to at least 11 state legislatures across the country about the book.

“That was the first time in my life I knew we had solid rock to stand on to fight this battle politically,” he said. “That was the game changer.”

Conover’s organization, End Abortion Now, creates model legislation that grants legal personhood to fertilized eggs, which would limit in-vitro fertilization procedures, and assigns penalties to people who have abortions in addition to doctors who provide them. Some of his legislative efforts have been defeated by organizations that are against criminal penalties for pregnant people.

“It’s a dirty little secret of the pro-life industry: Their heretical teaching that has informed the types of laws they’ve supported for five decades, the lie that women should be allowed to kill their own children with immunity and impunity because they themselves are victims of abortion,” Conover said. “It is a lie that says that they are never legally culpable, however willfully or intentionally they carry out the act of taking the life.”

Regardless of the legislative strategy, the panelists agreed changing the culture of America to take on a Christian biblical worldview, which will require all pastors to take the same position on abortion as their own.

“We must see that the church plays that role culturally, to create that social tension. That’s the standard, that’s the ideology,” Storms said. “But that’s when we have to say, ‘Well, how does that flesh out in the real world?’ It doesn’t always look so pretty when we actually see that applied. How is abortion going to end? I don’t know, maybe it’s going to be a civil war, maybe it’s going to be a whole variety of other means.”

States Newsroom reproductive rights reporter Sofia Resnick contributed to this report.

******************************************************************************************

Kelcie Moseley-Morris is an award-winning journalist who has covered many topics across Idaho since 2011. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho and a master’s degree in public administration from Boise State University.

The preceding article was previously published by the Georgia Recorder and is republished with permission.

The Georgia Recorder is an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on connecting public policies to the stories of the people and communities affected by them. We bring a fresh perspective to coverage of the state’s biggest issues from our perch near the Capitol in downtown Atlanta. We view news as a vital community service and believe that government accountability and transparency are valued by all Georgians.

“Kay (Kat) Yang Stevens has never been an employee of Family & Children’s Counseling Services,” the Center confirmed to the Blade

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NEW YORK – Just hours after appearing on Fox News to spread anti-transgender propaganda, more questions are being raised about the claims of cisgender women’s rights activist Kay Yang, about her claim to have worked as an LGBTQ youth educator.

“I was brought on as the outreach and education coordinator,” Yang, 36, told Jesse Watters Tuesday night. “Talented young people are being weaponized against their own interests. That’s what happened to me.”

"Behind the message of inclusivity & kindness there's a really sinister agenda to normalize policies & practices that cause irreversible medical damage to healthy children & undermine the sex-based rights of women and girls"Thank you for the opportunity @JesseBWatters @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/pREJ9LLjXE

As she spoke, Watters’ producers played video from an incident last month in New York City’s Washington Square Park, in which Yang protested a Pride celebration and shouted profanity that Fox obscured using the show’s logo over her lips. Her protest led to a physical altercation with other women who tore her sign from her hands. Yang shared that video herself on her Twitter account last month, and made headlines in the Daily Mail.

NYC Pride – 6/25/2023My name is K. Yang, I'm a former trans rights activist & LGBT non-profit whistleblower. I was just kicked, hit, pushed, mobbed by dozens of people in Washington Square Park. ♂️ who identify as ♀️ called me "bitch" & assaulted me. @KnownHeretic @bjportraits pic.twitter.com/4J9AaFXSEf

The self-proclaimed “former trans rights activist” has actually been on Fox a few times since January, telling this same story, most recently to a Fox digital reporter via video last week, as the Los Angeles Blade reported. She told Hannah Grossman it was in 2011, and in other interviews on Watters’ show and Fox & Friends she said it was in “the early 20-10s.”

Each time, Yang claimed she was employed by an LGBT Center in New York. She told Fox she had been “indoctrinated” and “exploited” by “The Center,” but a spokesperson for New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center told the Blade they have “no record of someone named Kay Yang having a position with our organization.”

That was strike one against Yang and her friends at Fox.

Before publishing our report Tuesday, the Blade asked Fox via email if anyone had confirmed Yang’s employment. Late Tuesday, hours after we published our report, a spokesperson directed us to the similarly named LGBT Center in Cortland, N.Y., more than 200 miles away in Central New York State.

Carol Tytler, director of development and marketing at the Family & Children’s Counseling Services, aka Family Counseling Services of Cortland County, confirmed via email that it has a division called the Cortland LGBTQ Center. But Tytler told the Blade that despite what Fox and Yang claim, she has never worked there.

“Kay (Kat) Yang Stevens has never been an employee of Family & Children’s Counseling Services,” wrote Tytler. “Any LGBT activities or services she claims to have provided would have been under the employ of an entirely different agency.”

Strike two for Fox and Yang, who Tytler revealed is also known to have used other names: “Kat” and “Yang Stevens.”

Tytler added some context about its operations, which are funded by N.Y. state. “Through a competitive application process, Family & Children’s Counseling Services now holds a grant through the New York State Department of Health to provide education, advocacy, and support for the LGBTQ+ community. The Cortland LGBTQ+ Center is a division of our organization and funded by that NYSDOH grant. In addition, the Center is striving to increase LGBTQ+ cultural responsiveness for the general community by offering training and technical assistance.”

But just to be clear, Tytler added this about Yang: “She has never been an employee of our agency.”

The Blade located a Twitter account Yang operates, with nearly 18K followers, along with a few websites such as thedeprogrammer.com and stopfemaleerasure.com, where she provides misinformation about gender identity, gender-affirming healthcare, trans rights and more. She also sells stickers and asks for donations either PayPal or to a P.O. Box in Ithaca, N.Y. Yang said Patreon closed her account for “hate speech,” which she said cost her $6,000.

Seneca Falls is absolutely beautiful and rich with women's rights and abolitionist history which overlap extensively. I would like to hold another convention for women's rights there. I had saved the $ for it when Patreon shut me down & seized $6000+ in funds for "hate speech".

Yang also has an account on Instagram with more than 10K followers.

As of press time, Yang has not responded to Blade emails or DMs about her claims to have worked where no one has any record of her ever having done so.

DeSantis told CNN “woke” policies contributed to the “military losing its way, not focusing on the mission,” which harmed recruitment number

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WASHINGTON – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, defended his proposal to reintroduce the ban on military service by transgender members of the U.S. Armed Forces if he is elected president in 2024.

DeSantis had debuted a series of policy proposals for the military earlier that day. These included striking diversity and climate change initiatives, ending efforts to root out white nationalism and extremism, and reinstating the Trump-era ban, which was lifted with an executive order by President Joe Biden on his first day in office.

The governor told Tapper “woke” policies contributed to the “military losing its way, not focusing on the mission,” which harmed recruitment numbers.

U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth addressed the declining enlistments last month, telling reporters including NPR’s Todd Bowman that “many young people tell her and recruiters about their fears of getting killed or wounded.”

Bowman said matters like the “ongoing bitter political divide over abortion, providing reproductive access to female service members” will “continue to be a political issue and also a recruiting headache.”

Tapper responded to DeSantis by citing an Army survey showing concerns about discrimination were a more salient issue than objections to “wokeness.” DeSantis said “I think there’s an issue about, like, not everyone really knows what wokeness is.”

The governor’s invocation of these arguments is consistent with efforts by Republican members of Congress over the last few weeks to defund diversity initiatives and attack LGBTQ service members.

“A military that is open to all qualified Americans is a military that is stronger and better—but instead of honoring our service members, Ron DeSantis would turn back to an era of discrimination and witch hunts,” said David Stacy, vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign.

He added, “All of this in service of his cruel and cynical politics of division and scapegoating to appeal to a small, but radical, political base.”

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