MEDICINE AND HEALTH, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Ideology Corrupts Medicine—and How One Reporter Exposed it A conversation with Hannah Barnes about the medical scandal at Tavistock, the UK’s only youth gender clinic. Bari Weiss

Posted By on July 16th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/when-gender-ideology-corrupts-medicine-tavistock?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last month, Britain’s National Health Service made major news when they announced that they were banning the use of puberty blockers for children, except for those enrolled in a tightly regulated clinical trial. The decision was made after an independent review found there were “significant uncertainties” surrounding the long-term effects of these drugs, which had previously been touted as totally reversible.

The announcement followed another major decision the NHS made last year on the same subject, which was to close Britain and Wales’ only treatment center for children with gender dysphoria: the Gender and Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock. The NHS found that the care provided at GIDS, which has operated for nearly 35 years, was “not safe or viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender related distress.”

These decisions bring the UK in sync with countries like Sweden and Norway, which have made similar policy decisions about gender care for children. But all of those countries are light-years away from how the United States approaches these issues.

My guest today, Hannah Barnes, has reported on this topic for years. Indeed, her reporting was the catalyst for many of these new changes. She’s here to explain what happened in the UK, and why the U.S. is so out of step with one of our strongest allies.

Hannah is an award-winning investigations producer at Newsnight, one of the BBC’s flagship news programs. Her important new book, Time To Think, follows the story from Tavistock’s inception to its imminent closure. It investigates how a clinic can open its doors to thousands of young patients at their most vulnerable, how it can operate for more than three decades without oversight or regulation, and how—in the words of some of the clinic’s own staff—this “medical scandal” unfolded.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Christopher Rufo Examines CRT’s Roots and Reach Peter Berkowitz

Posted By on July 16th, 2023

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/07/16/christopher_rufo_examines_crts_roots_and_reach_149500.html

Following the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd and amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, controversy erupted over the teaching of critical race theory in the nation’s K-12 schools. The mainstream media adopted a contradictory approach. Journalists reported that American schools generally did not teach critical race theory; at the same time, the prestige press contended that opponents of CRT’s presence in the curriculum obstructed students’ encounter with the harsh realities of race in America. The journalists’ conflicting denial of its presence and endorsement of its radical ideas reflect CRT’s extensive influence. A perverse mixture of doctrines deriving from Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, CRT undergirds much of the hard-left agenda that has burrowed deep into America, not least the mainstream media.

Consider two 2021 articles that appeared less than two weeks apart.

On July 1 of that year, NBC News journalist Phil McCausland reported that according to a survey, “Teachers nationwide said K-12 schools are not requiring or pushing them to teach critical race theory, and most said they were opposed to adding the academic approach to their course instruction.” 

McCausland lacked curiosity. He did not ask whether the ideas teachers were presenting could reasonably be understood as reflecting CRT’s central tenets. And he did not consider whether parents’ concerns about critical race theory stemmed from the shift to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With children learning onscreen at home, parents could look over their kids’ shoulders and see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears as teachers explained that America was systemically racist, that white people were of necessity oppressors and African Americans were of necessity oppressed, and that group identities and group rights superseded personal achievement and individual rights. Instead, NBC News  implied that parents objected to CRT to suppress the cruel facts about race in America.

Several days earlier, Washington Post reporters Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey published a 3,000-word article tracing much of the furor over critical race theory – “a decades-old academic framework that most people had never heard of” – to the belligerent activism of Christopher Rufo, “a young conservative from Seattle.” The reporters sought to refute Rufo’s claim that critical race theory “has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people” by suggesting that Rufo used “questionable evidence” to gin up CRT as “the latest cultural wedge issue.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Jeffrey H. Anderson The Allure of Last Time’s Loser Republican voters’ preference for presidential also-rans over new blood is an electoral Achilles’ heel.

Posted By on July 16th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/gop-voters-preference-for-last-times-loser

Perhaps the biggest weakness of Republican presidential voters is their attachment to last time’s loser. Time and again, Republicans have nominated the candidate they rejected in the primaries the last time around, only to have general-election voters resoundingly reject that candidate this time around.

Over the past 30 years, Republicans have nominated the runner-up during the previous Republican primary (when not featuring a GOP incumbent) three times. Of these, Bob Dole won 30 percent of the electoral vote in 1996 (losing by 220 electoral votes), John McCain won 32 percent in 2008 (losing by 192), and Mitt Romney won 38 percent in 2012 (losing by 126). Only once during this stretch have the Democrats nominated last time’s loser: Hillary Clinton, who won 42 percent of the electoral vote in 2016 (losing by 77).

Meantime, the two parties have combined to nominate four candidates over that span who weren’t last time’s loser and hadn’t previously been elected as president or vice president. Among such “new blood” candidates, George W. Bush won 50.4 percent of the electoral vote in 2000, John Kerry won 47 percent in 2004, Barack Obama won 68 percent in 2008, and Donald Trump won 57 percent in 2016.

In sum, new blood candidates have three wins to one loss over the past three decades (winning an average of 56 percent of the electoral vote), while last time’s losers have zero wins and four losses (winning an average of 36 percent).

When they nominate last time’s loser, however, at least Democrats don’t generally pick someone who has already been rejected by the general electorate. Republicans seem to believe that swing voters think like Republicans do when seeing a candidate they rejected last time: Oh, I didn’t vote for him (or her) before, but I’m familiar with him (or her), so I’ll do it this time. But the way actual swing voters think is more like this: I didn’t vote for him last time, and there’s no way I’ll vote for him based on his resume since then.

If Donald Trump had vanished from the scene on November 3, 2020, and swing voters’ only memory of him was the first 46 months of his presidency, they might seriously contemplate giving him another shot.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Christians Here Really Need Help’: The Persecution of Christians, June 2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on July 16th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19805/persecution-of-christians-june

The genocide of Christians at the hands of Muslims continued to rage throughout the month. Muslim “Fulani jihadists” slaughtered 2,500 Christians and “burned down or wantonly destroyed” 18,200 churches in just the first six months of 2023. Fifty million Christians have further been “forced out of their ancestral homes and lands into displacement and homelessness.” — news.band, June 3, 2023 – Nigeria

“All I can say is that war has been declared on Christians in Mangu [Plateau State, Nigeira]. The terrorists are just attacking and killing Christians in most of the communities around Mangu… Christians here really need help.” — Markus Artu, a member of the Mangu Local Government Council, after 150 Christians were killed in the first three weeks of June; Morning Star News, June 27, 2023 – Nigeria

On June 7, the mutilated body of Shazia Imran Masih, a 40-year-old Christian widow, was found. Earlier, four Muslims had “abducted, gang-raped and killed” her “for refusing to convert to Islam and marry the primary suspect.” – Morning Star News, July 7, 2023 — Pakistan

“The accused are very influential, and they have been persistently threatening us….” — Zafar Masih, a member of a local evangelical church, Moring Star News, July 3, 2023– Pakistan

“Indonesia’s Joint Ministerial Decree of 2006 (SKB) makes requirements for obtaining permits nearly impossible for most new churches. Even when small, new churches are able to meet the requirement of obtaining 90 signatures of approval from congregation members and 60 from area households of different religions, they are often met with delays or lack of response from officials. Well-organized radical Muslims secretly mobilize outside people to intimidate and pressure members of minority faiths.” – Moring Star News, June 23, 2023– Indonesia

“We…. are not building a church. So what’s the problem? When we pray, where is the problem?” — Elysson Lase, Christian woman, Morning Star News, June 23, 2023 — Indonesia

Egypt’s “contempt of religion” law — supposedly meant to protect the sanctity not just of Islam, but of Christianity and Judaism as well, is a farce…. [T]his law exists solely for the benefit of Islam….” – Report, wataninet.com, June 19, 2023 — Egypt

“Some of the more enlightened [Muslims] and Copts responded by asking why the alleged response by Abanoub Imad were to be considered as a reason to arrest him and put him under trial [even if he did indeed post them], when it was simply a reaction to insults against Christianity? Why are those who insulted Christianity in the first place not to be tried as well? And why are Christians always the only ones to be held accountable for contempt of religions, even though there are countless pages/sites that insult Christianity non-stop?” – Report, wataninet.com, June 19, 2023 — Egypt

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Don’t Believe The Leftist Media Narrative About The State of the 2024 Race

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/14/dont-believe-the-leftist-media-narrative-about-the-state-of-the-2024-race/

To the surprise of no one, the leftist corporate media’s coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been abysmal. Predictably, their reporting is full of omissions, half truths, and wishful thinking. Once again, they only report their preferred narratives, in a desperate attempt to persuade stupid people and gullible news outlets into believing them, including Conservative Inc.

As usual the leftist coastal elites are attempting to shape their perceptions into reality.

Here are the two mainstream narratives thus far.

The first one says that Joe Biden, despite suffering from alarming rates of delirium and senility, while presiding over horrendous poll numbers will unequivocally be the Democratic nominee for President.

The second narrative says that no matter how early it is, Donald J. Trump has an insurmountable lead in the ever-expanding GOP field, and thus will be the Republican nominee for President for a third consecutive time. This despite the fact that the Iowa Caucuses are not occurring for another six months.

Let’s analyze the first leftist corporate media narrative—that Joe Biden is the de facto nominee. As much as the objective journalists at the New York Times and Washington Post would like the gaffe-ridden career politician to remain in the White House, there are many plausible reasons why Team Biden, to the extent he even has a political operation, should be concerned.

Let’s put aside the fact that under Biden’s watch he has overseen the worst border crisis in U.S. history, the highest inflation in four decades, a historic crime wave in Democrat run cities, a disgraceful and embarrassing exit from Afghanistan, weakness towards China, indecision and mismanagement towards the war in Ukraine, appeasement towards Iran, betrayal against Israel, pathetic pandering in defense of “LGBTQ rights,” including supporting providing life altering puberty blockers to minors, attempting to jail his leading political opponent for the same supposed “crime” that he committed, and let’s not forget, a corrupt family that sold our country out, while raking in millions from China, Russia, Ukraine and Romania.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

It’s Time To Acknowledge America’s Education Crisis By Tina Blum Cohen

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/14/its-time-to-acknowledge-americas-education-crisis/

Tina Blum Cohen is a Republican running for Congress in Texas District 7.

The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding college admissions has once again thrust America’s educational system into the spotlight. A major question that has come from this ruling is whether America’s children are being intellectually and academically prepared to even enter or succeed in these colleges and universities. The tragic answer is that America’s public education system is failing to equip our youth with the tools necessary to succeed in higher education and in their future professional lives. We are failing America’s most valuable asset—our children.

According to the Department of Education’s own report on the state of education in America, we are experiencing what is essentially an educational crisis. Scores in every subject and grade level have been declining over the years. While illogical and unscientific Covid policies certainly worsened the crisis to a point that lawmakers can no longer ignore the problem, the situation has actually been declining for years. Especially concerning are scores in reading and mathematics, with close to one third of students in elementary school behind in grade-level reading and only about a third of fourth graders able to perform grade-level math.

Earlier this year, the nation was shocked to hear that 55 Chicago schools reported zero proficiency in math or reading despite billions of dollars of federal funding for the schools. But this crisis is not unique to Chicago. In my own Houston community, the Texas Education Agency has had to intervene in the leadership of the state’s largest public school district after years of failing to adequately educate our community’s children.

Unfortunately for America’s youth and the future of our nation, public schools have put core educational instruction on the back burner, instead prioritizing culturally sensational philosophies. We now see schools artificially inflating grades in order to ‘pass’ students who do not have the educational tools necessary to succeed in higher grades. While this is done under the guise of “equity,” it is unfortunately setting kids up for future failure when they find themselves unprepared for the next steps in their education, and ultimately, for adulthood and success in society.

Likewise, we see schools ditching the concepts of expectations and consequences, both educational and behavioral, including things like homework deadlines. Besides the negative effect this has on mastering educational principles that will be used to learn more difficult concepts later, this lack of personal accountability and consequences has our youth growing accustomed to an unrealistically lenient reality which does not exist in our society. We do our children a disservice when we do not intellectually and emotionally prepare them to deal with reality, including things like personal consequences or meeting deadlines. Imagine their shock when their first employer sets a hard deadline for a project, and they have no experience with being required to meet a deadline. They will have been set up for anxiety and potential failure rather than confidence and success.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

You Won’t (???) Believe What Disney Is Doing to Snow White By Stephen Green

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/07/14/you-wont-believe-what-disney-is-doing-to-snow-white-n1710609

Disney is making a live-action version of Snow White, because of course they are, and the movie looks even worse and more woke than even my jaded self could have imagined because management has not yet finished relieving itself on the quality content produced in bygone eras.

The corpse of Walt Disney could not be reached for comment due to spinning so hard that it was last seen digging its way deep into the Earth’s mantle.

For only the third time in VodkaPundit’s 21-year history, I find myself with almost nothing to say other than, “I literally can’t even.” The first time was maybe a year ago.

But do notice that I wrote “almost nothing,” because, please, just look at this:

The formerly “fair maiden” known as Snow White is now Latina and the Seven Dwarves are One Dwarf and Six Painfully Diverse Magical Creatures Dressed in Garb Cast-Off from the Greater Des Moines Renaissance Faire.

The live-action Snow White will be, from all appearances, not only worse than you imagine but worse than you can imagine.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Gavin Newsom: the President nobody needs Delusional Democrats should spend a week in California BY Joel Kotkin

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://unherd.com/2023/07/gavin-newsom-the-president-nobody-needs/

For many Democrats, Gavin Newsom has become an object of desire. Aged 55, the Governor of California’s relative youth, coiffed good looks and ability to speak in something close to coherent English contrasts with their bumbling leader, whom as many as two in three Americans feel is not entirely up to the job. As a result, the chorus calling for Newsom to become America’s 47th President has been growing steadily louder.

Not surprisingly, Newsom himself seems to be waging his own campaign to achieve that end. He is, according to Politico, acting “like the president-in-exile”, promoting a new gun control constitutional amendment, working to ban petrol-powered cars and threatening to arrest the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for “kidnapping” migrants. Indeed, his profile seems to be growing just as Biden’s handlers ramp up their efforts to insulate the President from the media, his poor cognitive state posing a danger both to himself and to his legislative programme.

Yet Newsom’s sparkling ascendency might dim somewhat if the media bothered to consider what is actually happening in his fiefdom. Flicking through the mainstream press, one could be forgiven for realising that Newsom has presided over California’s fall from economic pre-eminence: the Golden State is now home to record homelessness, sub-par GDP growth, the nation’s highest poverty rate, a tech downturn fuelled by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and a consistently underperforming public education system. These factors have fuelled a powerful out-migration trend — up 135% in just two years. Recent polls find upwards of 40% of residents are considering leaving, while the rising tide of wealthy emigrees has already taken away $20 billion in adjusted income since 2018.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Biden Trying to Kill Short Term Health Insurance By Deane Waldman, M.D.

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/biden_trying_to_kill_short_term_health_insurance.html

President Biden has taken to the airwaves to sell his plan to crack down on short-term health insurance policies, which he terms “junk.” Taking away the right to choose is not only bad healthcare policy, it runs counter to the spirit of freedom on which this country was founded. 

The history of short-term, limited duration (STLD) policies is straightforward. In order to coerce Americans to use only government approved (Washington controlled) taxpayer-subsidized policies, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) included the individual mandate, an order for all Americans to purchase insurance. Washington restricted STLD policies to non-renewable 3-month plans. The Trump administration expanded public choice by allowing such policies up to 12-months in duration and renewable for three years. Millions of Americans used this affordable vehicle to cover themselves and their families, giving them a viable alternative to expensive and restrictive ACA insurance with its “auto-renewal.”  

Biden wants to quash STLD insurance policies making them illegal, calling them a scam and junk. 

Americans are free to buy junk bonds, including government ones. We are free to buy junk stocks and junk cars. Many happily attend junk events. Shouldn’t the public be able to decide what is junk versus jewel, what is scam and what is savior? Individual Americans are better judges of how to spend their money than Washington. 

In the 2012 challenge to the ACA, NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court struck down Obama’s individual mandate saying it was unconstitutional to force Americans to purchase what the government commanded them to buy. Now Biden wants to do an end-run and force the public to buy only what Washington allows. If Americans want to have medical insurance, Washington wants to mandate what Americans must purchase. 

Health insurance, any insurance for that matter, is a way to manage risk. A person pays an insurance company a comparatively small amount of money to hedge against the chance the person will need to expend a large amount of money when something unexpected happens, such as a housefire, a flood, or an automobile accident with injuries. Never mind that insurance premiums are already a very large expense, with the average family set to expend $30,065 on healthcare costs this year. More than 80 percent will go to insurance companies. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who’s Afraid of Moms for Liberty? A growing cadre of angry mothers is taking over school boards and winning influence as GOP kingmakers. Why are they being called a ‘hate group’? By Robert Pondiscio

Posted By on July 15th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/whos-afraid-of-moms-for-liberty

In a breakout session in a windowless conference room at last weekend’s Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warrior Summit” in Philadelphia, Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and father of three school-aged daughters, is stiffening spines. Dozens of attendees, mostly women, are nodding and taking notes as Ziegler explains how to work with local news media. 

“Your product is parental rights. Your product is protecting children and eliminating indoctrination and the sexualization of children. You’re the grassroots. You’re on the ground. You’re the moms, the grandparents, the families that are impacted. The stories you tell help set a narrative,” Ziegler coaches them.

One story above us, the ballroom floor of the downtown Marriott is groaning under the weight of crowded press risers, where camera crews have set up for the parade of Republican presidential hopefuls coming here to curry favor with the more than 600 Moms for Liberty members attending—and a few thousand more watching the livestream. 

Ron DeSantis held forth this morning. Nikki Haley is scheduled to speak at lunch. Donald Trump will close things out later this afternoon. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are on tap for tomorrow. 

It’s an astonishing display of political drawing power, considering Moms for Liberty didn’t even exist three years ago. The candidates have all come to pay obeisance to the animating idea that has galvanized these women: that parents—not the government—should be in charge of how their children are raised and educated. 

If you want to understand why these politicians have come, you need to go to the breakout sessions, away from the camera’s gaze, where, hour after hour, Moms for Liberty chapter leaders and foot soldiers learn how to run for school boards—and if they win, how to advance their agenda even when in the minority. There are talks on messaging strategies and mining school board minutes for signs of “woke indoctrination.” There are workshops on how to file public records requests and navigate the legal system. 

They aren’t messing around. More than half of the 500 candidates Moms for Liberty endorsed for local school board elections last year won their races. “School choice moms” provided the margin of victory in DeSantis’ first run for Florida governor in 2018. Democrat Terry McAuliffe was leading the race for Virginia governor in 2021 before his debate remark that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” handed the win to Republican Glenn Youngkin. 

Moms for Liberty is the beating heart of this country’s movement of angry parents—and American education has never seen anything quite like it.