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

    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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    Missouri Republican Caucus Results 2024

    The Republican caucuses will take place in person across the state beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Instead of secret ballots, participants will move around a room and form groups that will determine how many representatives each candidate will have at district and state conventions held later. Missouri voters may affiliate with a party via […] More

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    Ferguson, Mo., Agrees to Pay $4.5 Million to Settle ‘Debtors’ Prison’ Suit

    A federal judge gave the settlement preliminarily approval nearly a decade after a class-action lawsuit accused the city of wrongfully jailing plaintiffs for traffic tickets and other minor offenses.The City of Ferguson, Mo., has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that accused it of violating the constitutional rights of thousands of people who said they were jailed without due process because they could not pay fines.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 amid protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white Ferguson police officer. It accused the city of jailing the plaintiffs in “deplorable” conditions simply because they could not pay debts owed for traffic tickets or other minor offenses.“They were threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement,” lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in the suit, noting that these conditions lasted until families could produce enough cash for bail, or until jail officials decided to let them out.On Tuesday, ArchCity Defenders, the nonprofit group in St. Louis that filed the suit, said in a statement that checks would be sent to more than 15,000 people who were jailed by the city between Feb. 8, 2010, and Dec. 30, 2022, and that the amount would depend on the number of hours each of them had spent in jail.David Musgrave, Ferguson’s assistant city manager, said in an email on Thursday that the city would not comment “while the settlement agreement is pending final approval by the Court.”Mr. Musgrave directed further questions to the city’s lawyers, one of whom, Apollo Carey, declined to comment. Another lawyer did not immediately respond to an email and call. Neither the mayor nor the Ferguson Police Department could be reached for comment on Thursday evening.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jean Carnahan, First Woman to Represent Missouri in U.S. Senate, Dies at 90

    Ms. Carnahan was appointed to the seat after her husband was posthumously elected to it just weeks after he was killed in a plane crash in 2000.Jean Carnahan, who in 2001 became the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to fill her husband’s seat following his posthumous election, died on Tuesday. She was 90.Her family released a statement saying that Ms. Carnahan died following a brief illness.“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life,” the statement said, without specifying the cause of death. “She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in the statement.Ms. Carnahan, the wife of Mel Carnahan, was appointed to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in December 2000, following the posthumous election of her husband, who was killed just weeks beforehand with their son and a longtime aide in a plane crash. She was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001.Ms. Carnahan, a moderate Democrat who had never held public office before being appointed to fill in for her husband, served for nearly two years. She lost to Jim Talent, a Republican, by 22,000 votes in November 2002.Following her defeat, Ms. Carnahan told The New York Times that despite the tumult and heartache she had endured, she had always pushed bitterness aside. “It’s an acid in your life that corrodes your soul,” she told The Times.Sheelagh McNeill More

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    ‘Utter stupidity’: Missouri Republican bids to bring back dueling for senators

    A Missouri Republican’s proposal to reintroduce dueling to solve statehouse differences was branded “utter stupidity” by a leading historian of political violence.“Back in the day,” Joanne B Freeman of Yale tweeted, “they were smart enough to take dueling OUTSIDE. The draft that I saw suggests doing it in the chamber. This doesn’t show guts or bravery or manhood – if it’s supposed to. It shows utter stupidity.”Freeman is the author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.The state senator behind the proposal said he was making a point about the breakdown of regular order in Missouri politics.The draft rule change came to national notice when it was posted to social media by Democrats in the state senate.“The Missouri Republican civil war continues to escalate as a member of the Freedom Caucus faction has filed a proposed rule change to allow senators to challenge an ‘offending senator to a duel’,” they wrote.The Missouri Freedom Caucus is a hardline rightwing group on the lines of the group of the same name in the US House of Representatives and with a similarly fractious relationship with party leaders, impeding political business.The draft rule read: “If a senator’s honor is impugned by another senator to the point that it is beyond repair and in order for the offended senator to gain satisfaction, such senator may rectify the perceived insult to the senator’s honor by challenging the offending senator to a duel.“The trusted representative, known as the second, of the offended senator shall send a written challenge to the offending senator. The two senators shall agree to the terms of the duel, including choice of weapons, which shall be witnessed and enforced by their respective seconds.“The duel shall take place in the well of the senate at the hour of high noon on the date agreed to by the parties to the duel.”The author, Nick Schroer, represents District 2 in the Missouri senate. According to his biography, he is a lawyer, specialising in family law and criminal defence.His chief of staff, Jamey Murphy, told Newsweek that Schroer was “deeply committed to restoring a sense of honor in the Missouri Senate” but suggested “the idea of a duel … in a metaphorical sense”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchroer told the Kansas City Star: “The behavior that we’ve seen on the floor, lack of communication from leadership, politics as a whole just eroding … If we’re going back in time and acting like an uncivilized society, I think we need to have discussion.”Dueling was long part of the American political scene, famously resulting in the killing of the founding father Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr in 1804. It had largely died out by the 1850s but other forms of political violence continued.Freeman has illuminated how incidents of political violence – including the South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks’ caning of Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts, in 1856 – paved the road to conflict.In 2021, after Donald Trump incited the January 6 Capitol attack and amid fears of rising violence, Freeman told the Guardian of the incidents she studied: “Depending on how it’s acted out and the language that’s used and the posturing that’s taken by the members of Congress, it’s deliberately intended to rile up Americans, which it does.“That kind of violence can encourage violence, intensify political rhetoric [and] seemingly justify extremism and violence. It has an impact on the public. If the public gets riled up, they’re going to demand more things from their representatives – more violence, more extremism.” More

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    Missouri student loan provider baffled by inclusion in supreme court debt relief challenge

    Newly released emails obtained by the Student Borrower Protection Center reveal employees at a student loan service provider in Missouri expressed confusion over the state’s attorney general placing the provider at the center of a lawsuit filed to block the Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.The United States supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on a legal challenge to the president’s student debt forgiveness of up to $20,000 in the coming weeks. That challenge – filed by the Missouri attorney general and five other Republican-led states – and another challenge filed by the conservative advocacy organization, Job Creators Network, made it to the supreme court.The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority – or Mohela – is at the center of the challenge by the GOP-led states, claiming the loan service provider would lose revenue and face negative impacts over its financial obligations to Missouri. Consumer advocates, meanwhile, have pointed out that Mohela stands to gain revenue from Biden’s cancellation plan.In court hearings on the challenges earlier this year, US supreme court justices questioned why Mohela did not bring its own legal challenges to Biden’s debt cancellation plan and how the Republican-led states could claim harm on their behalf.Emails released since establish that Mohela employees expressed similar confusion.“The [Missouri] state AG needed to claim that our borrowers were harmed for standing, so they’re making us look bad by filing this not only with [Missouri] on it, but especially bad because they filed it in [Missouri],” wrote a Mohela employee in September 2022.Another Mohela employee asked in an October 2022 email: “just out of curiosity, is MOHELA apart of the lawsuit going on to prevent the loan forgiveness? Are we the bad guys?”A fellow employee responded, “Mohela isn’t technically a part of that lawsuit, the Missouri AG is suing on their behalf. However, it’s all about the [Family Federal Education Loans] stuff, and since they changed the rules, that lawsuit should be ruled as lacking standing.”Ella Azoulay, a Student Borrower Protection Center research and policy analyst, argued the emails confirmed the “partisan hack job” of Missouri’s lawsuit to block student debt relief.The legal challenges have paused Biden’s student debt relief plan announced in August 2022. The relief plan would grant up to $20,000 in student debt relief for Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 in student debt forgiveness for all other borrowers with annual incomes under $125,000. Nearly 26 million Americans had applied for relief under the plan by November 2022. More

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    I’m a trans teen in Missouri. Why is the state trying to take away my healthcare? | Chelsea Freels

    According to a Washington Post-KFF poll, only 43% of cisgender people (a person whose gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth) know a transgender person, so allow me to introduce myself.My name is Chelsea Freels and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a transgender junior at Clayton high school in Missouri. I love learning about psychology, computer science, and political and queer theory. After the pandemic relinquished its grip enough to open schools, I joined and have helped lead the business and media side of Clayton high school’s first robotics team. (Go RoboHounds!)Two years ago, I started coming out to my peers as Chelsea. While I started by coming out first to my transgender friends, I eventually came out to my robotics team and the rest of the school shortly after. In the same timeframe, I started seeing an endocrinologist at the Washington University Transgender Center to explore the implications of beginning gender-affirming healthcare. During my time at Washington University’s clinic, I learned about the benefits and risks of medically transitioning in great detail.Since medically transitioning I’ve never been happier. I’ve recovered from my gender dysphoria-fueled depression and made more friends than ever before. Additionally, I’ve been able to do well in difficult classes and starting gender-affirming care felt like replacing an underlying sense of dread with hope for the future. Due to gender-affirming care, I’m able to see a future with me in it.However, those hopes were spoiled earlier this year when Missouri’s state government decided transgender kids had too many rights. In service of that cruel objective, the Missouri state senator Mike Moon introduced senate bill 49, while Missouri’s unelected attorney general, Andrew Bailey, introduced the most extreme gender-affirming healthcare ban in the country via an “emergency rule”.Of the duo’s governmental policies, Moon’s SB 49 appears the most likely to carry the force of law. SB 49, misleadingly titled the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, bars all gender-affirming healthcare for minors who haven’t started treatment by 28 August. While the passage of this bill wouldn’t affect me, it would affect my partner and many of my transgender friends who planned to start hormone replacement therapy (colloquially known as HRT) soon.This bill seems designed to appear moderate, in comparison with its other proposed versions, to secure passage. While SB 49’s long list of siblings has been so extreme as to criminalize supportive parents, it’s worth noting that taking away essential healthcare is never an exercise in moderation.Bailey’s emergency regulation is a two-faced exercise in evil, simultaneously claiming that “individuals of any age experiencing gender dysphoria or related conditions should be able to and are able to obtain care in Missouri” and placing un-passable roadblocks, like requiring over 18 months of therapist visits.For reference, the attorney general’s order only lasts for another 274 days, less than half of the 18 months of therapy required. Even the most “humane” part of this order, the provision that allows people already on gender-affirming healthcare to continue their care, is fatally flawed, given the requirement to “promptly” comply with his order.While both SB 49 and the attorney general’s order are terrifying to be on the wrong end of, the attorney general’s rule evokes a unique sense of horror. Until recently, the light for Missouri’s transgender minors has been the candles on an 18th birthday cake. “I can finally start HRT,” my partner said as they told me about their plans for when they turn 18. However, the order attempts to snuff those candles out by instituting a healthcare ban on every transgender person, regardless of their age.Even though Bailey, Moon and their associated conspirators continue trying to remove transgender people from this world, they are certainly doomed to fail. When I talk to transgender kids at Clayton, I can see the terror and anger radiate from their eyes, but I can also see an overpowering sense of joy. Joy for being accepted by their peers, joy for the community we’ve found. Something deep inside knows that things are going to turn out OK for us.For my part, I can say that Moon has (inadvertently) started a queer relationship. I met my partner (who is nonbinary) inside the Capitol, fighting with them against some of SB 49’s impersonators. My partner is extremely smart, strong and gives the best hugs. When I see their face, I know we’re going to win this fight. We may not win today’s battle for gender-affirming healthcare in Missouri, but the forces of love will encroach on the Missouri state capitol as the days fall into years.If you want to help our cause, please love and respect the trans people in your life. We could all use it.
    Chelsea Freels is a transgender activist and a junior at Clayton high school More

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    It’s not just trans kids: Republicans are coming after trans adults like me, too | Alex Myers

    On Thursday 13 April, Missouri’s attorney general issued an emergency ruling that restricts access to gender-affirming care for both minors and adults, under the guise that hormone therapy is an “experimental use” rather than an FDA-approved treatment. For the past year, transgender youth have been a football for conservative politicians, with their access to gender-affirming care restricted or outlawed in 14 states. But this move by Missouri’s attorney general is the first attack on gender-affirming care for transgender adults; assuredly, it won’t be the last.The first time I tried to get access to gender-affirming care was in 2003. I was 24 years old and lived in Rhode Island. I’d been out as transgender for eight years by then, eight years spent looking (on a good day) like a 14-year-old boy, until finally the me I saw in the mirror and the me I saw in my head didn’t match any more. Only testosterone would make me feel like myself.I told my doctor, who was kind and sympathetic and said she had no idea about the protocols for administration of testosterone to a transgender person. She did find me a list of all the practitioners in Rhode Island who offered such care. There were three names on the list. True, Rhode Island is not a large state, but still: three names. I called them all. Only one would see me, and only after I had gone to therapy and had a psychologist certify that I was ready to transition.That was the standard back then – and that’s what the Missouri attorney general wants to require of adult transgender individuals now, only more extensive. In 2003 in Rhode Island, I needed to see a therapist for at least three visits. The Missouri AG wants documentation of least three years of “medically documented, long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria” before an adult can be approved to get hormones. Three years of therapy is lengthy, time-consuming and expensive; three years is a very long time to suffer before being allowed to get medical attention.Moreover, back in 2003, “gender identity disorder” was in the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM) as a mental disorder. Doctors required transgender individuals to visit a psychologist so that there was a “legitimate” diagnosis to accompany the prescription of hormones – even though, back then and still today, the use of hormones for gender reassignment is an “off-label” use. But that diagnosis was removed from the DSM in 2013, replaced with “gender dysphoria”.That’s the term Missouri’s AG uses in his emergency ruling and, in doing so, trying to return to the idea that being transgender is synonymous with being mentally ill, a narrative that the right has used at several historical moments to marginalize LGBTQ+ individuals. The narrative here isn’t really about a diagnosis or medical legitimacy – it certainly isn’t about the health of the transgender person. The subtext clearly is that transgender people are mentally ill and delusional, and they need a medical authority to help them figure out who they are.The therapist that I saw in 2003 was a gay man who had a lot of compassion for the situation I was in. He knew it was a hoop I had to jump through, and he also knew he had to do his job. He asked me questions, took notes, and eventually wrote a letter certifying that I fit the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” and that hormone therapy would help treat this disorder.I felt uncomfortable with the process; it seemed to me then and it seems to me now that there isn’t anything wrong with my gender identity. I know very well who I am; it’s how I feel about my body that needed to be addressed in a medical way. That’s the shift that was made in the DSM – away from “gender identity” and towards “dysphoria”. That’s the shift that the Missouri AG is trying to undo and rewrite.But that diagnosis and that therapist’s letter got me a prescription for testosterone in Rhode Island, a medical intervention that was absolutely transformative and life-saving for me.And then I moved to south-west Florida. I called endocrinologist after endocrinologist, asking if they would see me, look at the paperwork from my Rhode Island doctor, look at the letter from the therapist. A dozen said no – one receptionist told me curtly that the doctor didn’t see “transgendereds”. Another hung up on me. A third said, “Are you kidding me?” Eventually, I found a doctor in the Miami area, a three-hour drive away, who agreed to see me.This was typical for transgender care back then and, sadly, now. Unless you live in or near a major metropolitan area, getting a doctor who is trained, comfortable and willing to provide gender-affirming care is not easy. I was a person with a lot of privilege: health insurance from my employer, a good income, the language and education and time to persist in finding a therapist and a doctor who would treat me. For many transgender individuals, this would be too much, especially to maintain for three years. Missouri is trying to pile more work on to an already significant burden.But more than the details of this particular attack, I hope people will see the mounting pattern here. The first wave of legislation came for transgender youth. This next wave is coming for transgender adults. Put these restrictions next to the rulings against abortion and you can see a larger picture of bodily control. Who gets to make medical decisions about their bodies? Not pregnant women. Not transgender people.Back in 2003, I was so frustrated by my own experience that I vowed to work for improvements. I’ve fought for transgender civil rights and worked in particular for transgender students. There were years when we were making headway, when a conversation between a transgender individual and their doctor was sufficient basis to prescribe hormones. Now, it seems like we are at an inflection point. It’s time to strip away the rhetoric and recognize what’s at stake: our rights to control our bodies, our rights to control our identities. And I’m not just talking about transgender people.
    Alex Myers is a novelist and teacher who lives in Vermont More