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      Biden Sidesteps Any Notion That He’s a ‘Flaming Woke Warrior’

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      Despite his alliance with abortion-rights supporters and L.G.B.T.Q. advocates, the president has deftly avoided becoming enmeshed in battles over hotly contested social issues.President Biden memorably jumped the gun on Barack Obama in endorsing same-sex marriage more than a decade ago, but at a June fund-raiser near San Francisco, he couldn’t recall the letters L.G.B.T.Q.And even as the Democratic Party makes the fight for abortion rights central to its political message, Mr. Biden last week declared himself “not big on abortion.”At a moment when the American political parties are trading fierce fire from the trenches of a war over social and cultural policy, the president is staying out of the fray.White, male, 80 years old and not particularly up-to-date on the language of the left, Mr. Biden has largely avoided becoming enmeshed in contemporary battles over gender, abortion and other hotly contested social issues — even as he does things like hosting what he called “the largest Pride Month celebration ever held at the White House.”Republicans have tried to pull him in, but appear to recognize the difficulty: When G.O.P. presidential candidates vow to end what they derisively call “woke” culture, they often aim their barbs not directly at Mr. Biden but at big corporations like Disney and BlackRock or the vast “administrative state” of the federal government. Republican strategists say most of their party’s message on abortion and transgender issues is aimed at primary voters, while Mr. Biden is seen as far more vulnerable in a general election on the economy, crime and immigration.Mr. Biden’s armor against cultural attacks might seem unlikely for a president who has strongly advocated for L.G.B.T.Q. people, the leader of a party whose fortunes ride on the wave of abortion politics, and a man who owes his presidency to unbending support from Black Democratic primary voters.Yet despite adopting positions over the years that pushed Democrats — and then the country — to embrace more liberal attitudes on social issues, Mr. Biden has kept himself at arms’ length from elements of his party that could pose him political problems. In June, the White House said it had barred a transgender activist who went topless at its Pride event.And while Mr. Biden’s age has become one of his chief political weaknesses, both his allies and adversaries say it also helps insulate him from cultural attacks by Republicans.Mr. Biden held a celebration of Pride Month on the South Lawn of the White House last month.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“Everybody wants to talk about how old Joe Biden is, but the truth of the matter is it’s his age and his experience allow him to be who he is and allow him to say the things and to help people in a way that nobody else can,” said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance director. Mr. Muñoz, who is gay, had Mr. Biden serve as his wedding officiant in 2017.Much of Mr. Biden’s loyalty from L.G.B.T.Q. Democrats stems from his 2012 endorsement of same-sex marriages when Mr. Obama was still officially opposed to them. Mr. Biden’s position was seen as politically risky at the time, before the Supreme Court in 2015 recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry, but has evolved into something he bragged about during his 2020 campaign.He has also been on the forefront of recognizing transgender rights. In his first week in office, Mr. Biden ended the Trump-era ban on transgender troops in the military. In December, he signed into law federal protections for same-sex marriages.At the same time, Mr. Biden has not adopted the terminology of progressive activists or allowed himself to be drawn into public debates that might leave him outside the political mainstream. On Thursday, after the Supreme Court’s major ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions, a reporter asked him, “Is this a rogue court?”Pausing to think for a moment, Mr. Biden responded, “This is not a normal court.”He also does not always remember the words most American politicians use to describe same-sex people. At the fund-raiser near San Francisco last month, Mr. Biden lamented the Supreme Court’s decision last year that ended the national right to an abortion and suggested the court was coming for gay rights next.Pro-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrators protesting outside a gathering of the conservative group Moms for Liberty on Friday in Philadelphia. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesParaphrasing two of the conservative justices, he said: “There’s no constitutional right in the law for H-B, excuse me, for gay, lesbian, you know, the whole, the whole group. There’s no constitutional protection.”During a stop at the Iowa State Fair during his 2020 campaign, a conservative provocateur trailing the Democratic presidential candidates asked Mr. Biden, “How many genders are there?”Mr. Biden replied: “There are at least three. Don’t play games with me, kid.”Then, perhaps not realizing that his inquisitor was a right-wing activist, Mr. Biden added: “By the way, first one to come out for marriage was me.”Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator who recently began a campaign to become the first transgender member of Congress, said Mr. Biden’s language gave him the ability to solidify Democrats behind a progressive social agenda and “reach communities and demographics that are not yet fully in the coalition.”“He’s not getting caught up on rhetoric that isn’t understandable for your middle-of-the-road voter,” Ms. McBride said.She also pointed to Mr. Biden’s age as helpful for making Democrats’ case on social issues without alienating skeptical voters.“His background allows him to say things that I think would be heard as more radical if they were said by a younger politician,” she said.As majorities of Americans have accepted gay marriage, social conservatives have made opposition to transgender rights a mainstay of their politics. And Republicans running to displace Mr. Biden have tended to focus on energizing G.O.P. primary voters rather than making a villain out of the president.“It’s hard to paint an 80-year-old white man as a flaming woke warrior,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime pollster for Republican candidates.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is perhaps the leading purveyor of Republicans’ anti-“woke” message, throwing barbs both online and in speeches. On Friday, his campaign cast even Mr. Trump as too liberal on L.G.B.T.Q. issues in a provocative video posted on Twitter.At a June rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. DeSantis described being approached by military veterans who don’t want their children and grandchildren joining the armed forces because of liberal policy changes instituted by Democrats — though the governor blamed Mr. Obama as much as he did Mr. Biden.“A woke military is not going to be a strong military,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You got to get the politicization out of it. And on Day 1, we’re ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies to woke-ify the military.”Mr. Biden has never presented as a left-wing culture warrior. A Catholic, he has long been wary about jumping headlong into fights over abortion rights. Even as his campaign and party are preparing to make his re-election bid a referendum on Republican efforts to further restrict abortion, Mr. Biden proclaimed to a crowd of donors in suburban Washington that he himself was not eager to do so.“You know, I happen to be a practicing Catholic,” Mr. Biden said last week. “I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”That stance has long caused some consternation among Democrats. It took until June 2019, weeks after beginning his 2020 campaign and under immense pressure from allies in his party, for Mr. Biden to renounce his long-held support for banning federal funding for abortions.Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder of We Testify, a group that shares women’s stories of having abortions, said Mr. Biden would need to adopt a more forceful position in favor of abortion rights to energize liberal voters in 2024. She suggested that in the same way Mr. Biden hosts championship sports teams at the White House, he should invite women who have had abortions to come and tell their stories.“The midterms show that Americans love abortion,” Ms. Bracey Sherman said. “Abortion has a higher approval rating than he does. He should be riding the abortion wave.”Kristi Eaton More

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      DeSantis Uses L.G.B.T.Q Issues to Attack Trump in Twitter Video

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      The Florida governor sought to contrast his record opposing gay and transgender rights in a video highlighting comments made by the former president during the 2016 campaign — but has gotten some pushback.Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign shared a provocative video on Friday attacking the record of former President Donald J. Trump regarding L.G.B.T.Q. people that was widely condemned as homophobic, including by a prominent group representing gay and lesbian Republicans.The video, posted on Twitter by the “DeSantis War Room” account, opens by showing Mr. Trump proclaiming, “I will do everything in my power to protect our L.G.B.T.Q. citizens.” Mr. Trump made those remarks at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, after invoking the horror of the Pulse nightclub shooting the previous month. The massacre, at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, in Mr. DeSantis’s home state of Florida, left 49 people dead.The video goes on to show Mr. Trump expressing support for transgender people using the bathrooms of their choice. It then attempts to contrast Mr. Trump’s position with the hard-line stance of Mr. DeSantis, abruptly transitioning into a jarring series of images of Mr. DeSantis (including one with lasers shooting out of his eyes) that are interspersed with right-wing internet memes (the smiling, heavily muscled man known online as “GigaChad”), news headlines (“Pride event in St. Cloud canceled after DeSantis signs ‘Protection of Children Act’ into law”) and pop culture references (among them shots of the titular character from the film version of the serial killer narrative “American Psycho”).The DeSantis team shared the video the same day that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian web designer who refused to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, putting the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people on shaky legal footing.Mr. DeSantis has frequently cast himself as a lightning rod for unfair criticism by liberals and has used such attacks to rally support from his political base. The video, compiled by another Twitter user, seemed intended, in part, to attract more liberal outrage at a time when he is struggling to gain traction in polls against Mr. Trump.It was the type of move — devised to provoke a reaction — that Mr. Trump often deployed from his Twitter account during the 2016 campaign.Earlier in his career, as a congressman, Mr. DeSantis did not seem consumed by combating the L.G.B.T.Q. community. At the time, he privately told a counterpart he didn’t care about people’s sexuality.And when he first ran for governor five years ago, Mr. DeSantis suggested he would take a more moderate approach on some L.G.B.T.Q. rights issues, saying that Republicans needed to move beyond debating which bathrooms transgender people should use. “Getting into bathroom wars, I don’t think that’s a good use of our time,” he said at a Republican candidate forum in 2018.But in this campaign for the Republican nomination, Mr. DeSantis has sought to highlight — and expand — his ultraconservative credentials in an effort to position himself to the right of his chief rival.The new video drew criticism not only from Democrats but also from some in his own party, including the Log Cabin Republicans, which describes itself as the nation’s largest organization for “L.G.B.T. conservatives and allies.” The group, which endorsed Mr. Trump in 2019 and has used his Mar-a-Lago club for events, called the video “divisive and desperate” and said it “ventured into homophobic territory.”Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican political strategist, wrote on Twitter: “The consultants who think this kind of ‘running to Trump’s right’ is going to be effective should be sacked.” And Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Trump critic, said, “Outrage after outrage is the only way these guys know how to campaign.”Mr. DeSantis’s campaign shared the video on Twitter with the text: “To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” referring to Mr. Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump, who spoke this week at an event in New Hampshire, is well ahead of Mr. DeSantis in national polls.John Tully for The New York TimesMr. Trump, who grew up in liberal New York and was a businessman for decades, was seen during his 2016 campaign by some Republicans as more open to the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But he also chose Mike Pence, then the governor of Indiana and a staunch conservative who had signed into a law a religious freedom act that was seen as hostile to L.G.B.T.Q. people, as his running mate. As president, Mr. Trump systematically dismantled L.G.B.T.Q. protections put into effect by President Barack Obama, particularly those concerning transgender people. The video shared by the DeSantis campaign reflects a race to the right on a number of issues in the primary. In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has signed bills restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, punishing businesses that admit minors to “adult live performances” such as drag shows and making it a misdemeanor trespassing offense for people to use bathrooms in public buildings that do not correspond to their sex at birth.And with its barrage of references to obscure right-wing memes, the video also shows how heavily Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has leaned into the brash and provocative parlance of fringe online conservatives. The Florida governor, who is running well behind Mr. Trump in national polls, signaled from the beginning of his campaign that he hoped to connect with right-wing voters online, including by announcing his candidacy in a glitchy livestream event on Twitter with Elon Musk.But by openly courting such insular conservative communities, Mr. DeSantis, who has told donors that he is the only Republican who can beat President Biden, may risk alienating the more moderate voters he will most likely need in a general election.The video also risks putting off some Republican donors, some of whom are more moderate on issues like L.G.B.T.Q. rights and are watching to see how Mr. DeSantis progresses before committing to his candidacy.In addition to implicitly comparing Mr. DeSantis to Christian Bale’s homicidal character in “American Psycho,” who in the book is a mega-fan of then-businessman Donald J. Trump, the video — set to a thrumming bass — without much explanation also highlights Leonardo DiCaprio’s role as a hedonistic, drug-addicted financial fraudster in the film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” as well as Brad Pitt’s depiction of Achilles in “Troy.” (Achilles, the hero of “The Iliad,” was often portrayed in later Classical Greek literature as the lover of his male companion, Patroclus.)For his part, Mr. Trump noted last month, sounding pleased, that the issue of limiting rights for transgender people had become a major animating force for conservative Republican voters.“It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that,” Mr. Trump said during a speech in North Carolina in June. “I talk about transgender, everybody goes crazy. Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.” More

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      Trump, Crossing Paths With DeSantis, Tries to Outflank Him

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      At a gathering of right-wing activists, Donald Trump vowed to target federal diversity programs and to use the Justice Department to investigate schools and corporations over supposed racial discrimination.Former President Donald J. Trump moved on Friday to outflank Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as they wrestled for conservative loyalties at a gathering of right-wing activists in Philadelphia, pushing a shared agenda of forcing the federal government to the right, restricting transgender rights and limiting how race and L.G.B.T.Q. issues are taught.Speaking hours after Mr. DeSantis’s address, Mr. Trump aimed to one-up his top rival by vowing to target federal diversity programs and to wield the power of the Justice Department against schools and corporations that are supposedly engaged in “unlawful racial discrimination.”Mr. Trump said that, to “rigorously enforce” the Supreme Court’s ruling a day earlier rejecting affirmative action at the nation’s colleges and universities, he would “eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the entire federal government.”He added that he would direct the Justice Department “to pursue civil rights claims against any school, corporation, or university that engages in unlawful racial discrimination.”A representative for Mr. Trump declined to directly answer a question about which races the former president thought were being subjected to discrimination.Since entering the race just over a month ago, Mr. DeSantis has repeatedly sought to position himself to the right of Mr. Trump, hitting his record on crime, the coronavirus and immigration. Nevertheless, the former president leads Mr. DeSantis by a wide margin in the polls.The rare convergence of the two leading Republicans on the campaign trail came at a convention of the newest powerhouse in social conservative politics, Moms for Liberty, which began as a small group of far-right suburban mothers but has quickly gained national influence.A third presidential contender, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, also spoke on Friday, with two others, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson, slated to appear on Saturday.Mr. DeSantis went first, headlining the opening breakfast event in a nod to the group’s founding in his home state in 2021. Its national rise — it says it now has 275 chapters in 45 states — has coincided with the Florida governor’s ascension in right-wing circles as he has pushed legislation to restrict discussions of so-called critical race theory, sexuality and gender in public schools.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said at the event that “what we’ve seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in this country: mama bears.” Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times“What we’ve seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in this country: mama bears,” Mr. DeSantis told the crowd of hundreds, to roars of applause. “We’ve done so much on these issues in Florida, and I will do all this as the next president.”Shortly after he spoke, the Supreme Court gave the conservative movement more victories with two rulings, one striking down President Biden’s program to relieve student loan debt and the other backing a web designer who refused to provide services for same-sex marriages.Mr. DeSantis’s pitch to social conservatives centers on the idea that he, not Mr. Trump, is the most likely to turn their priorities into legislation. In his 20-minute speech, Mr. DeSantis highlighted legislation he championed in Florida banning gender transition care for minors, preventing teachers from asking students for their preferred pronouns and prohibiting transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.Not all attendees were persuaded. Alexis Spiegelman, who leads the Moms for Liberty chapter in Sarasota, Fla., and is backing Mr. Trump for president, said she had not seen her governor’s policies translate into change at schools near her. She was critical of his presidential bid.“I just don’t know why we would want a knockoff when we have the real, authentic Trump,” she said.Pro-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrators gathered on Thursday outside the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, where some of the Moms for Liberty events were being held.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMs. Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador in Mr. Trump’s administration, struck a different tone later Friday morning. Lacking the kind of recent legislative record that Mr. DeSantis can point to, she instead drew on her experiences as a mother: She directly called herself a “mom for liberty” and often invoked her children.“Moms care about a lot of things — it’s not just schools,” Ms. Haley said. “We care about the debt, we care about crime, we care about national security, we care about the border. Moms care about everything.”Calling itself a “parental rights group,” Moms for Liberty has built its platform on a host of contentious issues centering on children — a focus that many on the right believe could help unite the Republican Party’s split factions in 2024.The group has railed against public health mandates related to the coronavirus and against school materials on L.G.B.T.Q. and race-related subjects. Its members regularly protest at meetings of school boards and have sought to take them over. Along the way, Moms for Liberty has drawn a backlash. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning civil rights organization, calls it an extremist group, saying that it “commonly propagates conspiracy theories about public schools attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children with a progressive Marxist curriculum.” Moms for Liberty leaders rejected the label in remarks on Friday.Tina Descovich, left, and Tiffany Justice, two of the founders of Moms for Liberty, which was created in 2021. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesBefore the group’s conference in Philadelphia, a half-dozen scholarly groups criticized the Museum of the American Revolution for allowing Moms for Liberty to hold some of its events there, including the opening reception.Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia, a Democrat, said on Thursday that “as a welcoming and inclusive city, we find this group’s beliefs and values problematic.”Protesters gathered outside the conference venues beginning Thursday night, and demonstrations stretched into Friday evening.The schedule for Saturday included a session led by KrisAnne Hall, a former prosecutor and conservative public speaker with past ties to the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia that helped orchestrate the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.Sessions at the event bridged a wide range of subjects, including exploration of “dark money’s infiltration in education” and discussions about the Federalist Papers. But the presidential candidates were the main draw.Tina Descovich, one of the organization’s founders, said in an interview that Moms for Liberty had invited every presidential candidate — including Mr. Biden — to speak at the event.“Our issue of parental rights and our concerns about public education in America are rising to the level of presidential candidates,” Ms. Descovich said, “which means for the 2024 election, that we are working to make this the No. 1 domestic policy issue.” More

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      in US Politics

      Sarah McBride, highest-ranking trans elected official in US, to run for Congress

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      Sarah McBride, the highest-ranked openly transgender elected official in the US, announced she is running for the US House of Representatives this week. If elected, she will be the first openly transgender member of Congress.“This campaign isn’t just about making history – it’s about moving forward,” said McBride in a press release on Monday. “To strengthen our democracy, we need effective leaders who believe in taking bold action and building bridges for lasting progress.”McBride is the only openly transgender person serving at the state senator level in the country, but there are seven other state lawmakers who identify as transgender, according to a national tracker by LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.Her candidacy comes amid an increase in state laws restricting the rights and lifestyles of people who identify as transgender.So far in 2023, state legislatures have signed into law nearly 80 measures targeting the LGBTQ+ community, “especially transgender youth”, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The bills include limiting access to gender-affirming care, prohibiting transgender kids from competing in sports and restricting students from using their preferred pronouns.“Too many politicians want to divide us, to tell us that teachers, doctors, even our own neighbors are the enemy,” McBride said in her announcement video released on Monday.The video included short clips of Republicans Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado – all of whom have supported legislation advocates have labeled as anti-transgender.Before running for office, McBride was the national press secretary for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.McBride, now 32, was first elected to Delaware’s state legislature in 2020, winning by a landslide in a heavily Democratic district, securing 73% of the vote. She was re-elected in 2022.She is now running for Delaware’s sole seat in the US House of Representatives. (Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont also each have one at-large representative.)The at-large seat is being vacated by the incumbent Lisa Blunt Rochester, also a Democrat, who has held the post since 2017. Blunt Rochester is running for Senate this election cycle to replace Senator Tom Carper, who is retiring.Blunt Rochester supported McBride in her first campaign for state senate and called her a “tireless advocate and trailblazer”.“I’m incredibly proud of all Sarah has already achieved and am excited to watch the next chapters in her career unfold,” Blunt Rochester told CBS at the time.In addition to Blunt Rochester, McBride has previously received support from other prominent Delaware lawmakers, including President Joe Biden.Biden’s late son, Beau Biden, had met McBride during his campaign for Delaware attorney general and described her as a sharp teenager who was “going to change the world”, according to Joe Biden’s foreword in McBride’s 2018 memoir.As a college student, McBride lobbied for the passage of a Delaware law that ensures equal protections for transgender individuals. She also interned at the White House during the Obama administration.In the foreword for McBride’s memoir, which was written in 2017, Biden said he was “proud to have been a part of an administration that spoke out and stood up for transgender Americans”.“But despite that progress, I left the vice-presidency knowing that much of the hardest work remains ahead of us in building a more perfect union for all Americans, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity,” he wrote. “The history of civil rights in America reminds us that progress is precious and can never be taken for granted.”If elected, McBride said she will focus on legislation that “addresses gun violence, protects access to abortion and tackles climate change”, according to the campaign announcement.
      This article was amended on 28 June 2023. An earlier version incorrectly listed Montana among states with a single at-large congressperson. More

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      Republican executive blogged about ‘conversion therapy’ for extremist group

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      The executive director of a Republican-linked non-profit wrote blog posts for an extremist organization in which he advocated so-called “conversion therapy”, the supremacy of biblical rules on marriage over “man-made law”, and expressed a general theocratic view that divine law as interpreted by US evangelical Christians trumps secular law.The since-deleted posts by Mark Trammell – now executive director of the self-styled civil rights group Center for American Liberty (CAL) – were written for Liberty Counsel, dubbed an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its work “to ensure that Christians can continue to engage in anti-LGBT discrimination in places of business under the guise of ‘religious liberty’”.The Guardian has previously reported on the financial relationship between CAL and CEO Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm, which a non-profit expert described as “problematic”, and the lack of transparency in the non-profit’s arrangements with a PR firm.But CAL’s extremist links, and other CAL attorneys links to groups like the Proud Boys and the Claremont Institute, raise questions about the organization’s recent pivot to suits that seek to limit transgender rights.Theocratic postsIt was while Trammell was working as director of public policy at another rightwing non-profit, Liberty Counsel Action, that Trammell wrote a number of blogposts for an affiliated organization, Liberty Counsel. Those posts, published in 2013 and 2014, have since disappeared from the organization’s website, but were exposed in a data breach of the organization’s website, and revealed now by the Guardian.In a September 2013 post, Trammell complained about laws passed in California in 2012 and New Jersey in 2013 that were the first in the country to ban so-called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy”, a scientifically discredited practice whose practitioners falsely claim to be able to change the sexual orientation of same-sex-attracted people.In the post, Trammell wrote: “In both California and New Jersey, by statute, licensed physicians are not permitted to provide reparative therapy to minors, under the age of 18, who struggle with an unwanted same-sex attraction and who desire such reparative therapy.”He continued: “This restriction on therapy is a viewpoint-based content restriction aimed at silencing Christian views on human sexuality.”In other posts, Trammell criticized Republicans for moves that in his view failed to acknowledge the supremacy of biblical over secular law, even if they were ostensibly defending conservative moral positions.In a March 2014 post on efforts by Republicans including Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to limit the power of the federal government to enforce same-sex marriage in states where it did not yet exist, he wrote that the proposed Defense of Marriage Act was “not the answer”.Rather, Trammell wrote, “as a component of the Natural Law, authored by God, the institution of marriage is beyond the ability of mankind to change. Simply put, it is a law given to us by God and since God’s ways are justice and His ways are higher than our ways.”Further on in the post, Trammell continued his advocacy of theocracy, writing: “For one to state that the Tenth Amendment reserves the authority for states to define marriage according to the will of the citizens of that state is to say that the Constitution had authority over the Natural Law. Such a conclusion is contrary to the essence of the Natural Law and is contrary to Scripture.”In a post that May, Trammell criticized the supreme court for its Town of Greece v Galloway decision that month, which upheld the right of the New York town’s board to open its meeting with a prayer, providing it did not exclude representatives of minority faiths from officiating in those prayers.Whereas the court defined the prayers as “ceremonial” and intended to “place town board members in a solemn and deliberative frame of mind”, Trammell wrote that the prayers were to “invoke divine guidance in town affairs”.He further wrote that the court was wrong in “concluding that the purpose of prayer is civic in nature and bifurcated from God”, adding that, “Legislative prayer is not about government; it is about God. Its purpose is not to solemnize the occasion or acknowledge religious leaders; it is to humble ourselves before God, seeking Him and His guidance.”Neither Mark Trammell nor Liberty Counsel responded to emailed requests for comment.Heidi Beirich is co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) and an expert on the North American and European far right.In a telephone conversation, she said that Liberty Counsel was “crudely anti-LGBTQ” and that “everything the organization does is part of a crusade to strip LGBTQ people of their rights”.On Trammell’s blogposts, Beirich said: “He essentially doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state,” and pointed to the view of the UN’s independent expert on gender and sexuality that conversion therapy “may amount to torture”.Lawyer for the Christian rightExcept for brief stints as a congressional intern and a county-level law clerk, Trammell has spent his entire career working for a string of rightwing organizations. They include Young America’s Foundation (YAF), where as assistant general counsel he secured Dhillon’s services in suing UC Berkeley over the university’s cancellation of a speech by the conservative firebrand Ann Coulter in 2017.Much of his early career, however, was spent in the service of organizations that are directly affiliated or historically connected to Liberty University, an institution founded by the rightwing Baptist televangelist Jerry Falwell in 1971.Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell Jr, was president of Liberty from the time of his father’s death in 2007 until 2020, when he quit amid media reports of a long-running affair in which his business partner would have sex with his wife, Becki, while Falwell looked on.Despite its former president’s outre personal life, Liberty’s honor code forbids students from “sexual relations outside a biblically ordained marriage, romantic displays of affection with a member of the same sex … and actions confirming denial of biological birth sex”.Liberty Counsel was founded by Matthew Staver in 1989, when he was dean of Liberty University Law School, and it has pursued lawsuits advancing a Christian right agenda under the banner of religious liberty. Its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and activism is the reason for the SPLC listing.Liberty Counsel Action is a 501(c)(4) non-profit affiliated with Liberty Counsel, a 501(c)(3). According to US tax law, 501(c)(4) entities can engage in politically partisan activities and campaigning in a way that is prohibited to 501(c)(3) bodies.Other extremist linksOther lawyers associated with CAL have their own history of extremist associations.New Jersey-based Ron Coleman first met Dhillon at the 2019 Trump White House social media summit and joined her law firm in August 2020, according to a YouTube video posted by Dhillon Law.He is currently representing the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in a lawsuit against the SPLC over their listing of the all-male street-fighting fraternity as a hate group.Coleman is also acted for extremist-friendly social media site, Gab and its founder Andrew Torba against Google, after the tech giant banned Gab’s app from its Play Store in the wake of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.Gab achieved infamy after Robert Bowers announced his murderous attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. Bowers was convicted on all charges related to that attack last week.The Guardian emailed Coleman’s Dhillon Law address for comment but received no response.On Coleman’s representation of McInnes and Gab, Beirich, the extremism expert, said that pursuing litigation was a “choice to affiliate with someone”, that McInnes is “absolutely a racist extremist” and the group he founded is a “white supremacist group”. She also described Gab as a “cesspool of hate”.CAL board member Lee Cheng has worked on lawsuits against admission policies in San Francisco since the 1980s, first winning a case against affirmative action quotas in the city’s school district in 1994, then winning another case in 1994 after the San Francisco United School District tried to change selective admission policies at Lowell high school to a lottery.He has advocated more broadly against affirmative action in education, including at a panel convened by the far-right Claremont Institute, where he appeared alongside the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax. UPenn attempted to withdraw Wax’s tenure this year over her long record of racist statements, including claims that “on average, blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites”.The Guardian emailed Cheng to ask about his apparent criticisms of diversity issues, and his speaking engagement alongside Wax.Cheng responded: “I’m not sure why you would conclude that I say that diversity initiatives are bad. I think racial discrimination is bad. I’ve never said diversity per se, defined as diversity of experience and perspectives, are bad.”Cheng added: “Diversity initiatives are good as long as they do not use race determinatively and predominantly to favor or disfavor any race.”Dhillon, meanwhile, has spread baseless conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi last October, joined election-denying legal efforts by Donald Trump and Kari Lake, and has been acting for far-right media figure Tucker Carlson since his ouster from Fox News.Beirich described Dhillon’s associations as “palling around with extremists”. More

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      in Elections

      Sarah McBride Aims to Be First Openly Transgender House Member With 2024 Campaign

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      Sarah McBride is no stranger to firsts: In 2012, she became the first openly transgender person to work at the White House, during the Obama administration.State Senator Sarah McBride announced on Monday that she would run for Delaware’s at-large U.S. House seat — a bid that, if successful, would make her the first openly transgender member of the U.S. Congress.The seat is currently held by Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat who said on Wednesday that she would pursue the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Thomas R. Carper, who is retiring. Both elections will take place next year.Ms. McBride, 32, is no stranger to firsts: In 2012, she became the first openly transgender person to work at the White House, as an intern in President Barack Obama’s administration. She won her Wilmington-based State Senate seat in 2020 with more than 70 percent of the general election vote, becoming the first openly transgender legislator in that position nationwide, and ran unopposed for a second term last year.Her candidacy comes during an onslaught of Republican-led policies that target L.G.B.T.Q. people.This year, 17 states have passed bills directed at gender-affirming care for transgender youth, a sharp uptick from the three states that had previously approved restrictions. And there are discussions to ban L.G.B.T.Q.-related information for K-12 students in states like Florida, where laws prevent public schools from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity.Ms. McBride, also a former national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, is likely to face a primary challenge in her solidly blue district. But she holds ample political capital in the state — helped by her relationship with President Biden, who wrote the foreword for the memoir she wrote in 2018. She also worked on the attorney general campaigns for Beau Biden, his son who died in 2015.Ms. McBride recently spoke with The New York Times about her candidacy. Excerpts from this conversation have been edited for clarity and length.What issues do you hope to prioritize in your campaign?There were so many pieces of the Build Back Better Act that were unfortunately left on the cutting room floor, and it is going to be critical for Congress to pick up those policies, like paid family and medical leave, affordable early childhood education and elder care. Those types of policies will be at the heart of my campaign, as will policies that I fought for in the Delaware General Assembly, like gun safety and reproductive rights. One of the issues where we have to continue to make progress is climate change. We can’t build a fairer, more just world if we also don’t protect our planet.A wave of bills in recent years have affected transgender people, like limiting transitioning procedures for children and restricting which bathrooms transgender people can use. What are your concerns going forward?The policies that you mentioned are wrong and unconstitutional, and they are an attempt by MAGA Republicans to distract from the fact that they have absolutely no agenda for families and for workers in our country. They are solutions in search of a problem. They are cruel, and we know that policies that target young people, that target parents, that target families, that target vulnerable people in our society, they never wear well in history. I truly believe that democracy only works when it includes all of us.What should members of your party do to respond to these laws?I’m incredibly proud that the Democratic Party has been unwavering in its support of L.G.B.T.Q. rights. We have seen Democrats from Montana, to Nebraska, to Virginia, to Delaware, who have made clear that attacks on vulnerable members of our communities, including L.G.B.T.Q. young people, will not stand, and we will do everything we can to stop them.People across this country are eager for politicians to appeal to our better angels and to focus on issues that actually matter to them. I don’t believe that targeting kids and parents for discrimination is a priority for voters in Delaware or across the country.Going into 2024, President Biden is struggling to maintain public approval. In your view, what should he and other Democrats be thinking about?Democrats have a strong record to run on, and there’s obviously unfinished work before us. This president has focused on working families, on recognizing that we all have a responsibility to one another. I think if this president continues to contrast his priorities with the invented problems and the culture wars of the right, that this president will win.There’s a sort of scrutiny that historically has come with being the first of anything. Are you concerned about backlash?There will certainly be attacks, but I’m no stranger to those. What I’ve demonstrated over the last few years is that I’m able to move past those attacks and focus on what matters to the people I represent. Congress is certainly different than the Delaware State Senate, but I am confident that when I get there, by focusing on issues that impact people of every party, of every ideology, and in every part of our state, that I’ll be able to find common ground with people whom I disagree with vehemently. More

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      in US Politics

      After Roe’s overturn, Republicans target trans rights using extremist rhetoric

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      Americans are “frustrated and anxious”, lamented former vice-president Mike Pence. The country is “in a precarious position” assessed North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson. And Glenn Jacobs, a former professional wrestling star and current mayor of Knox county, Tennessee, declared that “these are hard times”.What could be the cause of such hardship? To the Republican presidential candidates who spoke in Washington DC on Friday at a major gathering of the religious right, the culprit was American society’s acceptance of transgender people and the broader LGBTQ+ community.The language and imagery is extreme and full of conspiracy theories.“We are facing the greatest challenge this country has ever seen, certainly in my lifetime,” the Missouri senator Josh Hawley said to the crowd of hundreds gathered for the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Policy Conference.He described the challenge as “a new Marxism that is rising in this country”, one that tells Americans, among other things: “That there’s no such thing as male and female, that there are not two genders. There’s 2,000 genders and it tells our children that the way God made them is wrong.“These new Marxists want to give America a new religion. They want to impose on us the religion of woke. It is the religion of transgenderism, critical race theory and open borders multiculturalism, and they are shoving it down our throats,” Hawley said.Held in the hotel where Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt, the audience of hundreds seated in its ballroom heard from several major Republican presidential candidates, including, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott, and the ex-Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.Their appearances came at an inflection point for cultural conservatives. A year ago, they had seen their long-held dream of overturning Roe v Wade become reality when the supreme court struck down the precedent after 49 years, allowing states to ban abortion. But in the realm of LGBTQ+ rights, the movement recently appeared to be on the back foot, with congressional Republicans in 2022 helping to pass a law that protected same-sex marriage nationwide, building on the supreme court’s establishment of the right in 2015.In response, groups opposed to rights for the gay, lesbian and transgender communities have orchestrated a well-funded backlash to the expansion of rights – one that is being fostered by extremists, has seen the erosion of gay rights in many states across the US and includes a growing threat of violence.“God hates pride. He hates pride in January, February, March, April, May and in the month of June,” conservative preacher John Amanchukwu proclaimed early in the event, in a reference to the LGBTQ+ Pride month that drew laughs and cheers from the crowd in Washington.The fallout has hit the trans community in America particularly hard. This year so far, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) says that 15 bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth have been passed into law, as have seven bills allowing or requiring the misgendering of transgender students, along with a handful of other measures targeting drag performances or school curriculum. All told, more anti-gay bills have been introduced in statehouses in 2023 than in the past five years, according to HRC.“The purpose of these laws is to facilitate a rise in political extremism by alienating and isolating LGBTQ+ Americans, and the impact of these laws is alarming,” said Kelley Robinson, president of HRC, in a recent statement, calling it a “state of emergency”.“In every county you represent, in every county your colleagues represent, you will find parents and children, teachers and nurses, community leaders and small business owners who are afraid that the rise in legislative assaults and political extremism has put a target on their backs.”Earlier this month, the pollster Gallup reported a drop in public support for same-sex relations, driven mostly by Republicans. The issue’s approval now stands at 64%, compared with 71% last year, with only 41% of Republicans approving – a decline of 15 percentage points from last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast week, rights groups Glaad and the Anti-Defamation League found that at least 356 incidences of hate directed at LGBTQ+ Americans occurred between June 2022 and the past April, including a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs that left five people dead.At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference, speaker after speaker made clear their resolve to continue the campaign against trans Americans.“We will end the gender ideology that is running rampant in our schools, and we will ban chemical and surgical gender transition treatment for kids under the age of 18,” said Pence.As governor of Florida, DeSantis has overseen a campaign against what he calls “woke ideology”, including a bill he signed earlier this year that bans gender-affirming care for minors, restricts its access for adults and allows the state to temporarily remove trans children from their parents.Polls show DeSantis in a distant second place to Donald Trump, who has maintained his lead in the Republican primary field by offering voters a familiar mix of conspiracies, charisma and promises to continue the policies he pursued during his first term as president.DeSantis stayed away from attacking the Republican frontrunner in his speech, instead promising the Faith & Freedom Coalition audience that as president, he would implement his policies in Florida across the United States.“We will fight the woke in the schools, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of government. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs,” DeSantis said. More

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      in Elections

      Fact-Checking Nikki Haley on the Campaign Trail

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      The Republican presidential candidate has made inaccurate or misleading claims about abortion, trans youth, foreign policy and domestic issues.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was the first prominent candidate to announce a challenge to former President Donald J. Trump’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.Since entering the race in February, Ms. Haley has weighed in on social issues and tapped into her experience as a former United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump to criticize current U.S. foreign policy.Here’s a fact check of her recent remarks on the campaign trial.Sex and gender issuesWhat Ms. Haley SAID“Roe v. Wade came in and threw out 46 state laws and suddenly said abortion any time, anywhere, for any reason.”— in a CNN town hall in JuneThis is exaggerated. Ms. Haley is overstating the scope of the landmark ruling Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. The 1973 decision also ensured that states could not bar abortions before fetal viability, or when a fetus cannot survive outside the womb. That is not the same as “any time,” as Ms. Haley said. That moment was around 28 weeks after conception at the time of the decision and now, because of advances in medicine, stands at around 23 or 24 weeks.Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, most states had laws banning the procedure at some point, with 22 banning abortions between 13 and 24 weeks and 20 states barring abortion at viability. A spokesman for Ms. Haley noted that six states and Washington, D.C., had no restrictions when Roe was overturned.What Ms. Haley SAID“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year.”— in the CNN town hallThis lacks evidence. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported record levels of sadness and suicidal ideation among teen girls. And depression among teenagers, particularly girls, has been increasing for over a decade. The causes are debated, but experts said no research points to the presence of trans youth athletes in locker rooms, or increased awareness of L.G.B.T.Q. issues in general, as a causal or even contributing factor.“I can say unequivocally that there is absolutely no research evidence to support that statement,” said Dr. Kimberly Hoagwood, a child psychologist and professor at New York University. “The reasons for the increased prevalence of depression and suicide among teenage girls are complex, but have been researched extensively.”Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, noted that teen depression rates have been increasing since the 2000s while widespread discussion and awareness of gender issues are a more recent development.“It could be stressful for some people, for the trans kids as well,” he said. “But to try to say that this is the cause, well, it just can’t be because this is a public health crisis has been going on for 15 years.”Possible factors in rising rates of teen depression include economic stress, the rise of social media, lower age of puberty, increased rates of opioid use and depression among adult caretakers, Dr. Brent said. There is also the general decrease in play and peer-related time, decreases in social skills, and other social problems, Dr. Elizabeth Englander, a child psychologist and professor at Bridgewater State University, wrote in an email. L.G.B.T.Q. youth also have a higher risk for mental health issues, according to the C.D.C.“Even if someone has found an association between being around trans or L.G.B.T.Q. youth and increased depression in heterosexual youth (which, to my knowledge, no one has), it seems incredibly unlikely that such contact is an important cause of the current crisis in mental health that we see in youth,” Dr. Englander added, calling Ms. Haley’s theory “outrageous.”Ms. Haley has weighed in issues of identity and abortion and tapped into her experience as former United Nations ambassador.John Tully for The New York TimesForeign policyWhat Ms. Haley SAID“If we want to really fix the environment, then let’s start having serious conversations with India and China. They are our polluters. They’re the ones that are causing the problem.”— in the CNN town hallThis needs context. Ms. Haley has a point that China is the top emitter of greenhouse gasses and India is the third-largest emitter, according to the latest data from the European Commission. But the United States is the second-largest emitting country.Moreover, India and China are the most populous countries in the world and release less emissions per capita than many wealthier nations. In 2021, China emitted 8.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita and India 1.9 metric tons, compared to the 14.24 metric tons of the United States.Ms. Haley’s spokesman noted that emissions from China and India have increased in recent years, compared with the United States’ downward trend, and are the top two producers of coal.Still, the two developing countries bear less historical responsibility than wealthier nations. The United States is responsible for about 24.6 percent of historical emissions, China 13.9 percent and India 3.2 percent.What Ms. Haley SAID“Last year, we gave over $50 billion in foreign aid. Do you know who we gave it to? We gave it to Pakistan that harbored terrorists that try to kill our soldiers. We gave it to Iraq that has Iranian influence, that says ‘death to America.’ We gave it to Zimbabwe that’s the most anti-American African country out there. We gave it to Belarus who’s holding hands with Russia as they invade Ukraine. We gave money to communist Cuba, who we named a state sponsor of terrorism. And yes, the most unthinkable, we give money to China.”— in a June fund-raiser in IowaThis is misleading. In the 2022 fiscal year, which ended in September, the United States gave out $50 billion in foreign aid. But the six countries Ms. Haley singled out received about $835 million total in aid or 1.7 percent of the total. Moreover, most foreign aid — about 77 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service — is channeled through an American company or nonprofit, international charity or federal agency to carry out projects, and not handed directly to foreign governments.Zimbabwe received $399 million, Iraq $248 million, Pakistan $147 million, Belarus $32.8 million, Cuba $6.8 million and China $1.7 million.The biggest single contracts to aid Zimbabwe and Pakistan were $30 million and $16.5 million to the World Food Program to provide meals and alleviate hunger. In Iraq, the largest contract of $29 million was awarded to a United Nations agency. And in Cuba, the third-largest contract was carried out by the International Republican Institute — a pro-democracy nonprofit whose board includes Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, the host of the fund-raiser Ms. Haley was speaking at.In comparison, the country that received the most foreign aid, at about $10.5 billion or a fifth of the total amount, was Ukraine, followed by Ethiopia ($2.1 billion), Yemen ($1.4 billion), Afghanistan ($1.3 billion) and Nigeria ($1.1 billion).Another $12 billion was spent on global aid efforts in general, including about $4 billion in grants to the Global Fund, an international group that finances campaigns against H.I.V., tuberculosis and malaria.Domestic policyWhat Ms. Haley SAID“We will stop giving the hundreds of billions of dollars of handouts to illegal immigrants.”— in the CNN town hallThis is disputed. Unauthorized immigrants are barred from benefiting from most federal social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. But the spokesman for Ms. Haley gave examples of recent payments made by local governments that allowed unauthorized immigrants to participate in benefit programs: $2.1 billion worth of one-time payments of up to $15,600 to immigrants in New York who lost work during Covid-19 pandemic, totaling $2.1 billion; $1 million for payments to families in Boston during the pandemic; permitting unauthorized immigrants to participate in California’s health care program for low-income residents, which could cost $2.2 billion annually.These, however, do not add up to “hundreds of billions.” That figure is in line with an estimate from an anti-immigration group that other researchers have heavily criticized for its methodological flaws.The group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, estimated in March that illegal immigration costs the United States and local governments $135.2 billion each year in spending on education, health care and welfare, as well as another $46.9 billion in law enforcement.But the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has found that an earlier but similar version of the estimate overcounted welfare benefits that undocumented immigrants receive, and undercounted the taxes that they pay. The net cost, according to Cato, is actually $3.3 billion to $15.6 billion.The American Immigration Council similarly concluded that education and health care account for more than half of the costs, and that the benefits were afforded to many American-citizen children of undocumented immigrants.The estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are barred from the vast majority of the federal government’s safety net programs. In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that immigration, illegal and legal, benefited the economy.What Ms. Haley SAID“Let’s start by clawing back the $500 billion of unspent Covid dollars that are out there.”— in the CNN town hallThis is exaggerated. Ms. Haley overstated the amount of unspent coronavirus emergency funding. In reality, the amount is estimated to be much smaller, roughly $60 billion. What is more, a budget deal between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy that was signed into law a day before Ms. Haley spoke rescinded about $30 billion of that leftover money.Lawmakers passed trillions of dollars in economic stimulus and public health funding, most of which has already been spent. The federal government’s official spending website estimates that Congress has passed about $4.65 trillion in response to Covid-19 (referred to as “budgetary resources”) and, as of April 30, paid out $4.23 trillion (or “outlays”), suggesting that about $423 billion has not gone out the door. But that calculation fails to consider the promises of payment (or “obligations”) that have been made, about $4.52 trillion. That is a difference of about $130 billion, but some of initially approved funding that was unspent and not yet promised has already expired.In April, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that rescinding unobligated funding from six laws between 2020 and 2023 — the four coronavirus packages, President Donald J. Trump’s last spending measure, and President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package — would amount to about $56 billion. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that supports reduced government spending, estimated about $55.5 billion in unspent funds. More