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      Walz, Bill Clinton and surprise Oprah: Democratic convention day three key takeaways

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      The third night of the Democratic national convention featured a surprise speech from Oprah Winfrey, along with scheduled remarks from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Tim Walz and other major party figures, many emphasizing the “joy” of Kamala Harris’s campaign.Here are some key takeaways:1. Tim Walz’s pitch to voters: ‘We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump’Kamala Harris’s running mate gave his keynote pitch to supporters at the end of the third night of the convention, talking about his military service, coaching and teaching days, and his family’s fertility journey. He leaned into his humble roots and deployed repeated football metaphors: “I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks … It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”He called on his supporters to step up with urgency: “We got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry, where no community is left behind, where nobody gets told they don’t belong.”2. Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, Kenan Thompson and other celebrities invigorate the crowdThe convention continued with a packed celebrity lineup. Oprah Winfrey earned huge cheers when she made an unannounced appearance. She denounced “people who would have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe” and took a swipe at JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comment. She put Harris’s candidacy into the historical context of other trailblazing Black women, including Tessie Prevost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who helped integrate public schools. And she roused the audience with her call to action, singing the word “joy”.Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson had a lively appearance, entering with a large Project 2025 book and virtually interviewing Americans who would be harmed by the rightwing agenda: “You ever see a document that can kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?”Musician Stevie Wonder urged the crowd to choose “joy over anger”. Actor Mindy Kaling gave a personal account of cooking with Harris. And musicians John Legend and Sheila E performed at the end of the night.3. Bill Clinton: ‘We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy’Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, addressed his 12th Democratic convention, reading off written notes, not the teleprompter, suggesting the speech was edited last-minute. He warned Democrats against complacency: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues. This is a brutal business.” He mocked Trump for his narcissism and obsession with crowd sizes, following Barack Obama’s widely cited joke on Tuesday: “[Trump] mostly talks about himself … his vendettas, vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.”Clinton preached a message of unity, echoing Obama’s comments, encouraging supporters not to demean or disrespect neighbors they disagree with. He praised Joe Biden for “voluntarily” giving up power and celebrated the hope Harris has injected into the race: “If you vote for this team … you will be proud of it for the rest of your life.”4. Parents of a Hamas hostage were featured while protesters and AOC pushed for a Palestinian speakerJon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave emotional remarks about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is held hostage by Hamas. Polin praised the White House and said they had met with Harris and Biden: “They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza.”Members of the uncommitted movement, who have been advocating for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel, said they welcomed the speech, but continued to advocate that a Palestinian leader get an opportunity to address the crowd. Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who has treated patients in Gaza, spoke on a Democratic convention panel centered on Palestinian human rights, but there hasn’t been a Palestinian American on the main stage. Gaza solidarity protesters staged a sit-in outside the convention, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the convention to “center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment”, posting: “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”5. Pete Buttigieg went hard after JD Vance: ‘Doubling down on negativity’Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation, went hard after Donald Trump’s running mate: “JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life that he has in mind for you, then you don’t count, someone who said that if you don’t have kids, you have ‘no physical commitment to the future of this country’ … When I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids … but our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical. Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice president sends a message … They are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness.”6. Prominent Republicans again rallied for Harris: ‘Our party acts more like a cult’Prominent Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters continued to earn loud applause at the convention, arguing that GOP voters should reject the former president, even if they don’t agree with all of Harris’s positions. “If Republicans are being intellectually honest with ourselves, our party is not civil or conservative, it’s chaotic and crazy, and the only thing left to do is dump Trump. These days, our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshiping a felonious thug,” said Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence also spoke, saying: “Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying. But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there.”7. Speakers uplifted LGBTQ+ rights: ‘Trump wants to erase us’Speakers repeatedly promoted LGBTQ+ rights, offering a sharp contrast to the Republican national convention which continually featured extremist, anti-trans rhetoric. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ organization, warned: “Trump wants to erase us … He would ban our healthcare, belittle our marriages, bury our stories. But we are not going anywhere. We are not going back.”Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor and the first gay man to serve as a US state governor, highlighted the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda of Project 2025: “Democrats welcome ‘weird’, but we’re not weirdos telling families who can and can’t have kids, who to marry or how to live our lives.” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said LGBTQ+ Floridians were enduring “endless state-sponsored hate”. And Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, earned loud applause when she said: “I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States supreme court: you can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead gay hand.”Democratic convention highlights:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Tim Walz rallies Democrats: ‘We’re gonna leave it on the field’

      Watch speeches from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro

      Oprah Winfrey in surprise speech

      Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

      What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More

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      Republicans are on the offensive, and ‘Tampon Tim’ Walz is to the rescue | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Watch out world, Republicans are on the offensive. Still smarting from being called “weird”, it looks like a bunch of GOP strategists got in a room this week to workshop devastating nicknames for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. After combining their dozen or so braincells, they came up with a winner: Tampon Tim. The name has been trending on social media as people on the right desperately try to make #TamponTim stick.Apart from the fact that it alliterates, what prompted this moniker? Well, in 2023 Walz signed a wide-ranging Minnesota education bill that, along with a number of other provisions, mandated public schools offer free menstruation products in their bathrooms.To anyone with an ounce of common sense, this sounds like a great thing to do. Tampons are expensive! And “period poverty” – the inability to afford menstruation supplies – is a serious problem in the US. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Thinx, a period product company, 38% of US teenage students who menstruate said that they “often or sometimes cannot do their best schoolwork due to lack of access to period products”. A 2019 edition of the same study also found that more 84% of students in the US have either missed class time or know someone who missed class time because they did not have access to period products.For a long time, period poverty was an overlooked problem; in recent years, however, there has been a wave of legislating to address it. According to the Alliance for Period Supplies, 28 states and Washington DC have passed legislation to help students have free access to period products while in school. So, while the bill Walz signed was commendable, it wasn’t radical in any way – it was part of a nationwide trend to combat a serious problem.I’ve got to hand it to the Republicans, it’s quite difficult to turn “implemented a mainstream policy making kids’ lives easier and helping them stay in school” into something negative, but it seems they are always happy to try. Predictably the right has been using the bill as a way to attack, not just Walz, but trans people.“As a woman there is no greater threat to a woman’s health than leaders … who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools. Those are radical policies Tim Walz supports,” a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt,told Fox News on Tuesday.The actual legislation, I should be clear, does not explicitly state that tampons should be put in men’s bathrooms. It says that free menstrual products “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades four to 12”. But the very idea that a policy might be inclusive and help trans students seems to drive Republicans up the wall.The “Tampon Tim” attacks aren’t just born out of a hatred of trans people, they also reflect the Republicans’ disdain for women. There are memes with Walz’s head on a tampon and showing him menstruating into his jeans – all of which are meant to convey the idea that Walz is feminine. Which, to many men on the right, seems to be the most insulting thing you can call a man. Last week, for example, the Fox News host Jesse Watters wondered why any self-respecting man would vote for a woman. “[T]o be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish – that person has mommy issues – or they are just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said. “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” Ah yes, that is exactly what the scientists say.While Republicans may be having fun with their silly nickname, I’m not sure it’s going to help them in the polls. If anything, it will help Walz. As Hillary Clinton posted on Twitter: “How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools.”Republicans’ juvenile tampon jokes also reinforce how Walz represents a very different model of masculinity than the one Trump and JD Vance embody. In 1999, for example, when Walz was a high school teacher and football coach in rural Minnesota, he helped students create the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). Walz has said he thought it was important for him to be the adviser to the GSA because “it really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married.” He wanted to show, in other words, that masculinity didn’t have to be toxic, that a real man had empathy.All of this to say: thanks for the nickname, guys! Rather than being the insult they think it is, Tampon Tim is a compliment. One that reinforces the fact that the GOP is suffering from a severe case of Toxic Schmuck Syndrome.New York’s oldest person said her secret to longevity is staying single“That’s why I am living … because I didn’t get married,” Louise Jean Signore, 112, told reporters this week. “I’d rather be single. When you are married, you have a lot of trouble.” The fact that Signore doesn’t drink or smoke probably also has something to do with it.Outcry on social media prompts new IUD insertion guidelinesWho says that complaining online is a waste of time? After TikTok users recently shared their painful experiences with getting intrauterine devices inserted, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued updated guidance on how doctors should share options for pain management with their patients. This is one small step towards taking women’s pain more seriously.Bulgaria’s parliament bans LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’This mirrors regressive legislation passed in Russia and Hungary in recent years.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe gender police consistently target female athletes of colour“More women from the Global South or developing countries are affected by sex testing in sports,” the executive director of a sports advocacy organization told the AP in the wake of the Imane Khelif “controversy”. The AP further notes: “International sporting federations don’t tend to promote an understanding of diversity in sex and gender identity and that gender tests have often targeted female athletes of color who don’t conform to typically Western, white ideals of femininity.”Israel minister says starvation of millions in Gaza might be ‘justified and moral’While extremist Israeli leaders are fantasizing about starving 2 million people to death and defending rape, Harris has said she doesn’t support an Israel arms embargo. It is becoming clear that, just like Joe Biden, Harris has no red line when it comes to Palestinian suffering.Women in China spread secret, female-only languageNushu, sometimes called “script of tears”, is a secret language that goes back centuries in China.A political candidate who told voters not to be ‘weak and gay’ lost her raceValentina Gomez, the Missouri Republican who released homophobic campaign videos, lost her bid to become secretary of state by an embarrassing margin.The week in pawtriarchyBehind their prickly demeanor, cats are big softies. New research suggests cats will grieve after the death of fellow pets. They’ll even grieve dogs. Cats, it would appear, have more empathy than the average Republican politician. More

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      Donald Trump claims to ‘know nothing’ about Project 2025

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      Donald Trump is trying to claim he has “nothing to do” with Project 2025, a political roadmap created by people close to him for his potential second term.The project, which is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank, seeks to crack down on various issues including immigration, reproductive rights, environmental protections and LGBTQ+ rights. It also aims to replace federal employees with Trump loyalists across the government.Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”The former president’s post came a day after the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said the US was in the midst of a “second American revolution” that can be bloodless “if the left allows it to be”. He made the comments on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back”.In response to Trump’s post, several critics were quick to point out that it appears unlikely that he is unaware of Project 2025, given that many individuals involved in the project are his closest allies.“Many people involved in Project 2025 are close to Trump world & have served in his previous admin,” CNN’s Alayna Treene said.Economist and Guardian columnist Robert Reich wrote: “Don’t be fooled. The playbook is written by more than 20 officials Trump appointed in his first term. It is the clearest vision we have of a 2nd Trump presidency.”The Trump campaign has previously pushed back on claims that he would follow the policy ideas set out in Project 2025 or by other conservative groups. His campaign told Axios in November 2023 that the campaign’s own policy agenda, called Agenda47, is “the only official comprehensive and detailed look at what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House”, though the campaign added that it was “appreciative” of suggestions from others.Still, Heritage claimed credit for a bevy of Trump policy proposals in his first term, based on the group’s 2017 version of the Mandate for Leadership. The group calculated that 64% of its policy recommendations were implemented or proposed by Trump in some way during his first year in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Heritage Foundation also created the first Mandate for Leadership that heavily influenced Ronald Reagan’s administration in 1981.The foundation claims that Reagan gave copies of the manifesto to “every member of his Cabinet” and that nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations it laid out were either “adopted or attempted” by Reagan. More

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      Colorado Republican party chair told to ‘step down’ after ‘God Hates Pride’ email

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      The chair of Colorado’s Republican party is facing calls to resign from members of his own group after the state organization sent out an email criticizing Pride month – and later calling for rainbow-colored Pride flags to be burned.Dave Williams, who is also a representative in Colorado’s legislature, has faced swift backlash from his fellow Republicans in the wake of the controversial email sent Monday.Much of the criticism aimed at Williams by other Republicans focused on the potential for his remarks to hurt the chances for members of their party to be elected.In a post to X on Friday, Valdamar Archuleta, a candidate for Colorado’s first district and head of the state’s Log Cabin Republicans, said that Williams “does not have effective communication skills” and should resign.“Building an effective winning team takes skills and talents not everyone has,” wrote Archuleta, who on Wednesday rejected the state Republican party’s endorsement. “Dave Williams should resign … or be removed.”Archuleta, who has supported transphobic groups in the past, previously defended Williams, telling 9News that the state party chair was attempting to get a reaction and mimic the persona of former president Donald Trump.When asked whether Williams should resign, Colorado’s house minority whip, Richard Holtorf, said: “Hell, yeah.” Holtorf added that a petition is being initiated for Williams’s removal.“He’s incompetent and he should step down,” Holtorf said. “He’s done so many destructive things in Colorado to not promote unity and [done] things that are outside the boundary and the scope of his role and responsibility as the state party chair.”He added: “Dave Williams should not be preaching to the Colorado electorate. It is not his place and it’s not the state party’s role.”In an email to the Guardian, Mary Bradfield, a representative who serves as the chair of the Colorado house Republican caucus, called on Williams to resign.“I think these statements made by chairman Dave Williams are inappropriate,” she wrote. “He should step down.”Nancy Pallozzi, the chair of the Jefferson county, Colorado, Republicans, told Fox21 News in a statement that several of the party’s county chairs, candidates and other members had called for Williams’s resignation over his latest comments and for sending out emails endorsing Trump, despite the party’s stance on primary neutrality.The email sent by the Colorado Republican party, with the subject line “God Hates Pride”, accused members of the LGBTQ+ community of being “godless groomers” who were out to “harm children”.Pride month is an annual celebration of LGBTQ+ people held in June each year. It recognizes the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where patrons essentially sparked the modern LGBTQ+ protest and celebration movement by resisting police harassment and extortion.“The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children,” read the state Republican party email, which was signed by Williams.The email also included a sermon from the controversial anti-LGBTQ+ pastor Mark Driscoll, entitled “God Hates Flags”, a pun alluding to Pride flags and a homophobic slur that rhymes with flag.A subsequent tweet on Wednesday from the official Colorado Republican account called for Pride flags to be burned. “Burn all the #pride flags this June,” read the tweet.Williams has been relatively unapologetic despite backlash.In an email to USA Today on Wednesday, Williams said Colorado Republican party officials “make no apologies” for their comments.“We make no apologies for saying God hates pride or pride flags as it’s an agenda that harms children and undermines parental authority, and the only backlash we see is coming from radical Democrats, the fake news media, and weak Republicans who bow down at the feet of leftist cancel culture,” Williams said.Williams did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Friday.The latest remarks from Williams come as the state has politically wrestled against anti-LGBTQ+ groups.Last year, in a blow to LGBTQ+ rights, the US supreme court ruled that a Colorado civil rights law that mandates businesses and organizations treat same-sex patrons equally was unfair to a Christian web designer based in the state who refused to make wedding websites for same-sex couples.Furthermore, Williams’s “God Hates Pride” email came just days after police in Carlisle, Massachusetts, launched an investigation into the theft of more than 200 Pride flags as June and the annual LGBTQ+ celebration arrived. More

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      Harrison Butker’s jersey sales rise as right wing lauds Chiefs kicker after rant

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      Harrison Butker’s university commencement address at Benedictine College excoriating Pride month, working women, abortion rights activists and others has prompted the National Football League to disavow his remarks – but the Kansas City Chiefs placekicker’s jersey sales have spiked as conservatives seize on their latest culture war.Butker has also drawn an impassioned statement of support from Josh Hawley, the far-right US senator from Missouri known for his opposition to abortion and a viral video which showed him running away from the mob he incited during the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.“We need a different generation of kids that are willing to say no that’s not right, there is such a thing as right and wrong, I’m not going in for all of this lefty garbage and I just thought that his calls for folks to stand up and be bold was great,” Hawley said in reference to Butker during an interview on Wednesday with Spectrum News.An NFL spokesperson on Thursday said the comments Butker delivered as the graduation speaker at Benedictine College five days earlier ran contrary to the league’s “commitment to inclusion”.“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” said the statement from the NFL senior vice-president Jonathan Beane, the league’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization.”The NFL’s statement aligned relatively closely with a separate one issued by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Glaad), which dismissed Butker’s 20-minute address as “a clear miss” and “woefully out of step with Americans about Pride, LGBTQ people and women”.Another notable rejection of Butker’s opinions came in the form of a statement from the Benedictine Sisters of Mount Saint Scholastica, which co-founded the college where the kicker spoke.“The sisters … do not believe that Harrison Butker’s comments … represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested,” their statement said. “Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division.”Yet, in scenes that called to mind the political right wing’s enthrallment with the film Sound of Freedom last year, Butker’s jersey was among the most sold as of Thursday, according to NFL.com.His jersey sales still trailed that of his Chiefs teammate Travis Kelce, whose support for vaccines and the Black Lives Matter movement – as well as his relationship with Taylor Swift – have infuriated the far-right set that is now coddling Butker. However, Butker’s jersey sales were outpacing that of the Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who has led Kansas City to three Super Bowl victories since the 2019 season.The Kansas City news station KCTV reported that a local store named the Rally House had completely sold out of Butker jerseys amid his speech’s controversy.“Just the demand after the speech – it’s been men and women. It’s been both calling to get his jersey,” the store’s manager, Aaron Lewis, reportedly told KCTV.Hawley on Wednesday then offered himself as one of the most public faces of the conservative delight inspired by the offense Butker caused with his speech.“He talks about not being too nice when you’re standing up for your convictions,” Hawley said to Spectrum News, a little more than three years after he threw up a clenched fist at – and then was caught on video running from – a mob of Donald Trump supporters who carried out the deadly Capitol attack after the former president’s 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden. “And I just think he’s right about that.”In his speech to the conservative Catholic school’s graduating class, Butker referred to “dangerous gender ideologies” in an apparent allusion to Pride month, which has been celebrated annually in June since the Stonewall riots in 1969.He also told the women in the audience that “homemaker” should be the “most important title” they hold.“I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” Butker said.Among a host of other arguments, Butker contended that access to abortion – which most Americans favor – stemmed from “pervasiveness of disorder”.The 28-year-old Butker’s conservative Catholic beliefs are well known, and so are his on-field exploits, including booting a field goal that forced the decisive overtime period in Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February.Benedictine, a private liberal arts school about 60 miles north of Kansas City, invited Butker to be its commencement speaker nearly three years to the day after the college removed its chaplain from his position after he disclosed “inappropriate conduct” with a female student.Meanwhile, a report on Friday from the Chicago Sun-Times documented how an Illinois-based monk belonging to the religious order which is associated with Benedictine pleaded guilty to a felony battery charge against a former student of the school where he taught – and has now landed on a list of organization members deemed to have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Morning After the Revolution review: a bad faith attack on ‘woke’

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      Writing on Substack in 2021, Nellie Bowles described some of the less attractive qualities that motivated her work as a reporter: “I love the warm embrace of the social media scrum. One easy path toward the top of the list … is communal outrage. Toss something (someone) into that maw, and it’s like fireworks. I have mastered that game. For a couple of years, that desire for attention … propelled me more than almost anything else. I began to see myself less as a mirror and more as a weapon.”Bowles is married to Bari Weiss, a former editor on the opinion section of the New York Times whose furious resignation letter earned her encomiums from Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump Jr.But Bowles wrote that her decision to convert to the faith of her Jewish wife had actually softened her approach to journalism: “I want to cultivate my empathy not my cruelty. I am trying to go back to being closer to the mirror than the knife.”However, her new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, is dazzling proof she is completely incapable of changing her approach to her profession.Bowles is a former tech reporter for outlets including the Guardian and the New York Times. For many reporters, the decision to write a book comes from wanting to dig deeper into a particular subject, or a desire for freedom from the restrictions of one’s former employer. For Bowles, longform turns out to be the chance to jettison the standards of accuracy of her previous employers in favor of the wildest possible generalizations.Here are a few fine examples: “The best feminists of my generation were born with dicks.” This is the author’s jaunty description of trans women, who, she informs us, are “the best, boldest” and “fiercest feminists”, who unfortunately – according to her – have concluded “that to be a woman is, in general, disgusting”.On the ninth page of Bowles’s introduction, meanwhile, readers realize how much we must have underestimated the universal impact of the movement to Defund the Police. Did you know, for example, that “if you want to be part of the movement for universal healthcare … you cannot report critically on #DefundThePolice”?Bowles identifies a similar problem with marriage equality: “If you want to be part of a movement that supports gay marriage … then you can’t question whatever disinformation is spread that week.”The wilder the idea, the more likely Bowles is to include it, almost always in a way that can never be checked. To prove the vile effect of wokeness on the entire news business, she informs us that colleagues “at major news organizations” have “told me roads and birds are racist. Voting is racist. Exercise is super-racist. Worrying about plastic in the water is transphobic.” And a “cohort” took it “as gospel when a nice white lady said that being on time and objectivity were white values, and this was a progressive belief”.Writing about a tent city in Echo Park, Los Angeles, Bowles explains why nobody living there was interested in a free hotel room: “Residents could not do drugs in the rooms. And the rooms were, of course, indoors. People high on meth and fentanyl prefer being outdoors, with no rules, with their friends.”Predictably, the book reaches a whole new level of viciousness when it reveals Bowles’ attitude toward trans people.Intelligent people know three essential facts about the debate over whether children under 18 should have access to hormones or surgery to make their bodies conform to the gender in which they think they belong.First, a large majority of trans people of all ages never take hormones or get surgery. Second, nearly all of those who do choose to use medicine to alter their bodies report a dramatic improvement in personal happiness. Third, a very small number of those who have undergone surgery or taken hormones to block puberty do change their minds and opt for de-transition.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNaturally, Bowles mentions none of those facts. According to her narrative, “the transition from Black Lives Matter to Trans Lives Matter was seamless … I don’t think this was planned or orchestrated. The movement simply pivoted.”No mention, of course, of polls conducted by Christian nationalists and their allies which determined that the best new fundraising tool would be an all-out attack on trans people, including the denial of their very existence, as well as the introduction of hundreds of bills in state legislatures across the country to make this tiny minority as miserable as possible.Instead, Bowles wants us to believe the debate is dominated by websites you might not have heard of, like Fatherly, which asserts: “All kids, regardless of their gender identity, start to understand their own gender typically by the age of 18 to 24 months.” One parent who appeared on PBS in 2023 is equally important in Bowles’s book, because she said her child started to let her parents know “she was transgender really before she could even speak”.Needless to say, Bowles is horrified that as America became more aware of the existence of trans people, the number of clinics available to treat them grew to 60 by 2023. Then she makes another remarkable claim: “If a parent resists” medical changes requested by a child, “they can and do lose custody of their child.”Is that true? I have no idea. If Bowles had written that sentence in the Times or the Guardian, her editor would most certainly have requested some sort of proof. Fortunately for her – but unfortunately for us – her publisher, a new Penguin Random House imprint, Thesis, does not appear to impose any outdated fact-checking requirements. The only visible standard here is, if it’s shocking, we’ll print it.
      Morning After the Revolution is published in the US by Thesis More

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      Missouri: home to child marriage, corporal punishment and sick ‘child welfare’ ideas | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Did you know that child marriage is still legal in much of the US? About 300,000 children and teenagers were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2018, according to the advocacy group Unchained at Last. At least 60,000 of those marriages “occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime”.Did you know that, until quite recently, Missouri was a “destination wedding spot” for children who wanted to tie the knot? The state has tightened its child marriage laws now – and is seeking to ban the practice – but not all lawmakers are happy about the changes. Missouri state senator Mike Moon said last year that he knows kids who have been married at age 12 (to another minor) and they’re “thriving”!Did you know that many school districts in Missouri still authorize corporal punishment? If a kid acts up in class, a teacher can spank them. Don’t worry though, they’re not allowed to do anything horrible like punch them in the face. According to one school district, the only punishment allowed is “swatting the buttocks with a paddle”.Did you know that Human Rights Watch gave Missouri an “F” grade last year for its compliance with international child rights standards?I mention all these fun Missouri facts because I think they’re important to bear in mind as we look at the latest dystopian news coming out of the state. Which is this: state representative Jamie Gragg is so concerned about the welfare of kids in his district that he has come up with a novel new way to “protect” them. How? By introducing a new bill which would force teachers to register as sex offenders if they use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns or otherwise help them in their “social transition”.The bill states that any teacher or school counsellor who provide support or “other resources to a child regarding social transition” could be found guilty of a class E felony and placed in the same sex offender registration category as someone possessing child sexual abuse images. They would not be able to work at a school again or be within 500ft of one.One hallmark of a Republican-authored bill is ambiguity: key terms are defined extremely broadly (or not at all) so that it is unclear what is prohibited and what isn’t. This vagueness is a feature not a bug: the idea is that people will over-comply because they’re worried about getting in trouble. It also means that Republicans can say “We didn’t mean it like that” if people try to argue that the legislation is unconstitutional. It’s a deviously brilliant tactic.This new anti-trans proposal is no exception to the GOP vagueness rule. “Social transition” is defined extremely broadly in the bill as: “The process by which an individual adopts the name, pronouns, and gender expression, such as clothing or haircuts, that match the individual’s gender identity and not the gender assumed by the individual’s sex at birth.”So what does this mean? Well it means that if this bill becomes law a teacher in Missouri would potentially be able to spank a child on the buttocks without facing any consequences but would lose their job and have to register as a sex offender if they used that kid’s preferred pronouns while doing the spanking. Hell, this bill is so broad that simply complimenting a cis girl who just got a “boyish” haircut could get a teacher in serious trouble.Of course, a bill is not a law. We should be very clear that, at the moment, HB2885 is just one lawmaker’s fantasy written down on paper. There are currently no co-sponsors for the bill and no hearing scheduled. It’s highly unlikely it will actually become law anytime soon. Erin Reed, a journalist specializing in transgender legislation and the first person to break the news of the bill, has noted that she doesn’t “believe something like this could pass, even in Missouri”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut just because HB2885, as it is currently written, is unlikely to move through the state legislature doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t alarm us. Extreme bills like this signal where Republicans want to head and help push the Overton window more and more to the right. Pretty soon a “moderate” is going to mean a raging conservative who is kind enough to think that a teacher shouldn’t be called a sex offender for using someone’s preferred pronouns. (Oh, hang on, that’s already what it means! Just how look at how frequently Nikki Haley is labelled a “moderate”.)It’s also important to note that while HB2885 might not move forward, plenty of other anti-trans bills will. Last year was a banner year for anti-trans bigots: over 308 anti-trans bills were introduced in the US, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, including 43 in Missouri. This year will probably be even worse.All this legislation, and the anti-trans rhetoric that comes with it, is endangering the lives of trans and non-gender-conforming people. A bill doesn’t have to be passed for it to contribute to an environment where is dangerous to be LGBTQ+. Transgender deaths are on the rise in the US, with 53 transgender people killed and 32 lost to suicide last year. So, again, don’t dismiss the importance of bills like HB2885. This particular proposal might not go anywhere, but its very existence is a horrifying sign of where the US is heading.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘A concern for everyone’: Tennessee poised to ban Pride flags in schools

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      Tennessee is poised to become the first state to in effect ban Pride flags in public and charter school classrooms, prompting outrage from the LGBTQ+ community.The Tennessee house advanced a bill, HB 1605, that forbids schools, teachers or faculty from displaying flags other than the US flag and the Tennessee state flag in public schools. The bill would also allow “a parent of a child who attends, or who is eligible to attend” a Tennessee public or charter school to sue their school district if a Pride flag is displayed “anywhere students may see the object”.The bill does not mention LGBTQ+ Pride flags or Black Lives Matter outright, but some Republican lawmakers have made it clear that the bill is meant to restrict them.The bill is expected to clear the senate as early as next week.Members voted for the bill after a verbal showdown between the state representative Justin Jones, a Democrat, and the Republican house speaker, Cameron Sexton. Jones was blocked from speaking on the house floor after likening the anti-LGBTQ work of the Tennessee legislature to a neo-Nazi rally held in Nashville earlier this month. When Sexton moved to end the debate and proceed to a chamber-wide vote, Jones blasted the speaker for silencing criticism of the proposed ban on Pride flags.Despite opposition, house Republicans comfortably passed the bill with a final vote of 70 to 24, splitting predictably along party lines.The vote sparked backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates, who noted that the bill’s advancement comes just weeks after Nex Benedict – a non-binary teenager in Oklahoma – died following a fight at the public high school they attended.“The flag is a symbol of acceptance, so if a teacher has a small Pride flag on the desk, or a pin on their bag, that signals to students, ‘oh, this is a safe person,’” said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project. “When there is an affirming adult in schools, it sends a signal that there is a place in the building that is safe for LGBT youth.”LGBTQ+ youth consistently report higher rates of bullying, physical threats and other forms of harassment, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. In 2021, nearly two-thirds of all LGBTQ+ youth reported feeling “persistently sad and hopeless”, compared to roughly one-third of heterosexual youth.And this is hardly the only attack on LGBTQ+ people in the state of Tennessee: just this year, lawmakers have filed at least 33 bills targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Sanders warned that the proposed ban on Pride flags harms all of Tennessee, not just LGBTQ+ and Black residents.“They are targeting our communities, but creeping restrictions on people’s expression and speech should be a concern for everyone,” he said.The bill’s primary sponsor, the Republican state representative Gino Bulso, said that the bill was inspired by parents in his district, who complained about that “certain teachers and counselors were displaying a Pride flag” in some of Williamson county’s schools.Bulso said in a January interview with the local news station WKRN that the LGBTQ+ Pride flag represents values and ideas that he opposes, including the 2015 US supreme court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.“Fifty years ago, we had a consensus on what marriage is, we don’t have that anymore,” Bulso told reporters. “So the values that I think most parents want their children exposed to are the ones that were in existence at the time that our country was founded.”When pressed by Democratic colleagues to explain the proposed ban, Bulso declined to say if the bill prohibits the display of the Confederate flag in Tennessee classrooms.Bulso’s office did not respond to the Guardian’s multiple requests for comment.Outside of his work as a state lawmaker, Bulso is a private attorney who helps parents pursue legal action against public school districts. He is currently representing a group of parents in their lawsuit against the Williamson county board of education for allegedly violating the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022, colloquially referred to by critics as a “book ban”, which requires schools to remove books that are deemed inappropriate for students.Notably, one of the four plaintiffs in the case, Aundrea Gomez, does not have children who are enrolled in Williamson county public schools. She has children who are “eligible” to be enrolled in the county school system, according to the lawsuit. Gomez also works as the Tennessee director of Citizens for Renewing America, a rightwing Christian non-profit that stands against “cancel culture”.“There’s obviously the risk of a conflict of interest between what Bulso is doing in his private practice, and what he’s doing as a legislator,” said Bryan Davidson, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. “A huge part of his practice is representing plaintiffs who do not have children in the school system they want to sue.”Like the state’s “book ban”, the house version of Bulso’s bill would allow parents like Gomez, whose children are “eligible” but not enrolled in the county public school system, to bring lawsuits against local education officials.Between ethical concerns about the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ students and the conflict of interest presented by Bulso’s private litigation work, Davidson said the bill presents an “obvious first amendment issue”.If the bill becomes law, it will likely face a legal challenge from attorneys at the ACLU of Tennessee, Davidson said.He said the bill belies “the first amendment and 100 years worth of supreme court precedent” on free speech and expression. 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