Attorneys representing national Republican groups are using the arrest of a Donald Trump supporter and alleged voter fraud in one of Florida’s biggest GOP strongholds to defend a controversial election bill pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Lawyers working for the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee late last week asked a judge overseeing a legal challenge to the controversial Florida voting law to take notice of three incidents of voter fraud that had surfaced in Florida over the last two years. The court filing has not previously been reported.
One of the cases cited involved a central Florida woman who pleaded no contest in December to charges that she had turned in fake voter registration forms on behalf of registered voters. When authorities first arrested Cheryl Hall in March 2020, news reports noted that she had posted pictures of herself on Facebook with DeSantis, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Sean Hannity. The New York Times reported she had life-sized cutouts of Trump and former first lady Melania Trump in the window of her house.
“Fraud is fraud, no matter who commits it or what party they prefer,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesperson for the NRSC. “Our goal is maximum participation and zero fraud. That’s why we’re fighting the Democrats in court to defend common-sense election integrity measures put in place by Republican legislatures across the country.”
Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed a legal challenge to the voting law passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature and the case is set to go to trial in a Florida federal court in late January.
The measure put in new limits on drop boxes and mail-in ballots, including a two-ballot limit on how many mail-in ballots someone could gather and turn in on behalf of the elderly or sick and disabled voters. The limit does not apply to immediate family members.
Democrats scoffed at Republicans highlighting their own members allegedly violating election laws. State Sen. Gary Farmer, a Broward County Democrat and attorney who strenuously opposed Florida’s new voting law, said the filing by Republicans “is not even relevant or material.”
“The ultimate irony here is the whole ‘Stop the Steal’ movement is actually the group violating election law and trying to take away the system for counting votes,” Farmer said.
Florida was just one of several GOP-controlled states that enacted voting restrictions in the aftermath of Trump’s loss and his unsubstantiated complaints about voter fraud, although it isn’t as restrictive as laws passed in Georgia and Texas.
Republicans contended that they were enacting the law to head off potential problems in the future. But a raft of internal emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO showed GOP lawmakers drafted the legislation with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer — and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election.
The League of Women Voters of Florida and the NAACP, as well as other groups, contend that the law unfairly harms elderly, disabled and minority voters. The case has attracted widespread attention from more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general as well as the administration of President Joe Biden.
Lawyers for GOP groups that intervened in the federal lawsuit have tried to present evidence to justify the rationale behind the law even though legislators did not really cite any incidents while pushing for the bill.
U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker, who is overseeing the case, early last week blocked the introduction of a December report prepared by a Florida International University professor. The report highlighted several examples of alleged voter fraud, including the recent arrest of four people from the retirement mecca The Villages, who are accused of casting multiple ballots in the 2020 presidential election. The report also cited a case where a central Florida town council election was reversed after the discovery of two illegal votes.
The pending federal trial will occur just as legislators are expected to consider additional election-related bills during Florida’s legislative session that started on Tuesday. DeSantis wants to spend nearly $6 million in the coming year to create a new election police to investigate voter fraud and other election law violations. Both Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls said they were open to considering the proposal, but neither leader gave a ringing endorsement either.
Cheryl Hall, a 63-year-old and very ardent Republican whose ranch house in Clermont sports life-size cutouts of Donald and Melania Trump and a MAGA poster in the window, was charged last week with 10 felony counts of submitting false voter registration forms. On at least 10 forms traced to Ms. Hall, officials said, the party affiliations of already-registered Democrats and Independents had been switched to Republican. More than 100 others that may be tied to her contained missing or bogus data such as wrong birth dates.
Ms. Hall was a canvasser for Florida First Inc., a recently created nonprofit that is financed at least in part by a dark-money group formed by Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and other Trump associates. Her Facebook page was festooned with photographs — some of which have been recently removed — of her posing with conservative luminaries, such as Donald Trump Jr., Sean Hannity, Roger J. Stone Jr. and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
Hall pleaded no contest in December 2021 and was sentenced to one year of probation.
Yet a black woman who asked if she was eligible to vote because she was just out of prison was given a provisional ballot that was never counted, she was sentenced to five years in prison. Her name is Crystal Mason and she was in Texas. You should look her story up. Talk about open racism and different standards of justice. Scottie
Jake Hoffman’s Twitter account now shows as suspended; Twitter told The Republic it is permanently suspended. Hoffman has said he is the president of and CEO of Rally Forge, the firm that was banned, which he called “one of the nation’s top conservative digital agencies” in the Center for Arizona Policy’s voter guide.
The firm created accounts that were engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” — essentially trolling by posting comments that appeared to be real people commenting on news and sharing right-wing opinions.
The Washington Post broke the story on what some experts characterized as a “troll farm” where teenagers wrote posts on social media on behalf of Turning Point Action, a conservative group working to elect Republicans and led by Charlie Kirk.
NEW In Arizona, journalism can be a team sport. GOP State Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer 12News photojournalist's question (which I provided) re why he signed phony declaration in 2020 that Arizona electors voted for Trump. Watch as AZRepublic's @ruelaswritings folos up… pic.twitter.com/Qp3YOLyBl9
Anything to promote capitalism and stop any restraint on the ravages of capitalism on the people who struggle to survive. They are trying to head off any suggestions that the government should use taxpayer money for the people. They will claim anything the government does for the public is “communism or socialism”.
Students in Florida could soon observe a “Victims of Communism Day” under a measure OK’d Thursday by a House subcommittee. Under the proposal (HB 395), government and public schools would begin observing “Victims of Communism Day” on Nov. 7, 2023. The measure would require public school students to receive 45 minutes of instruction on communist leaders and the suffering of victims under their rule.
Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet System, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, are among the leaders and topics listed in the measure. The House Secondary Education and Career Development Subcommittee unanimously passed the proposal. Republican Rep. David Borrero of Sweetwater is the bill sponsor.
Rep. David Borrero reminds us of Matthew 20:26 & encourages us to stand up and be leaders for just causes like the unborn. #floridafpcpic.twitter.com/jiLTreC9Ae
— Florida Family Policy Council (@FLPolicyInsider) March 16, 2021
But that’s not all. Centner Academy has been meeting hub for the far-right — hosting racist anti-vaxxer Chris Nelson and a Sept 14 event with Micheal Flynn which included Proud Boys, QAnon types, fascist social media influencers and FL Rep David Borrero. pic.twitter.com/ehhJwxOis7
A Catholic curia in Poland has asked for a court to determine the sexuality of the victim of a priest and whether he took “pleasure in the intimate relationship”. The victim says he was 12 years old when the abuse began.
Last year, Janusz Szymik – pictured above as a child – launched a civil case against Bielsko-Żywiec diocese. He is seeking 3 million zloty (€660,000) compensation from the curia, which he argues is responsible for abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest – who can be named only as Jan W. under Polish privacy law – in the 1980s.
A church court had previously found Jan W. guilty of sexual offences against Szymik when the latter was a child. In 2017, he was given a five-year ban on conducting priestly ministry and hearing confession, and was ordered to live in isolation.
‼️ Kuria w Bielsku-Białej chce, aby sąd sprawdził, czy ofiara księdza pedofila mężczyzna jest homoseksualistą i czy relacja z księdzem nie była dla niego źródłem satysfakcji. Tylko, gdy koszmar się rozpoczął, ofiara miała 12 l. Ujawniam to dziś w @onetplhttps://t.co/hKMOXn0MwK
Nan sent me this suggesting I might post it for those that have yet to see / hear it. There are clips of it in video on YouTube channels like CNN. Thank you Nan for sending me the link. Scottie
Some Republican leaders are trying to move on from former President Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election that he lost.
“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage.”
But Trump — who has endorsed dozens of candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and still holds by far the widest influence within the GOP — is trying hard not to let them move on.
“No, I think it’s an advantage, because otherwise they’re going to do it again in ’22 and ’24, and Rounds is wrong on that. Totally wrong,” Trump told NPR in an interview Tuesday, referring to his false and debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The interview was six years in the making. Trump and his team have repeatedly declined interviews with NPR until Tuesday, when he called in from his home in Florida. It was scheduled for 15 minutes, but lasted just over nine.
After being pressed about his repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, Trump abruptly ended the interview.
Trump’s mixed messages on getting vaccinated
The interview began with the pandemic and vaccinations.
Trump, whose administration oversaw the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, recommended that people get vaccinated but said he’s firmly against mandating that they do so.
“[T]he mandate is really hurting our country,” Trump claimed, adding, “A lot of Americans aren’t standing for it, and it’s hurting our country.”
He continued, “The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it’s got to be individual, but I recommend taking them.”
The opposition to mandates is popular with Republicans, and the Supreme Court is currently weighing the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers. But his comments come during the record omicron surge, as the unvaccinated are far more likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease, and as Republicans are far more likely to be unvaccinated.
Epidemiologists and health experts warn that if more people don’t get vaccinated and the virus continues to morph, it could prolong the pandemic — and delay any sense of getting back to normal.
The former president said he wants to see therapeutics, used to treat the virus after someone is infected, produced and distributed more widely.
Trump’s firm grip on the Republican Party, but tenuous grasp on reality
Trump is not just any former president.
Even many members of his own party have blamed him for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but since then Trump has only tightened his grip on the GOP.
He remains one of the most popular figures in the Republican Party and is considered the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, if he decides to run again.
When he ran in 2016, Trump was seen as having a shoestring campaign, fighting an uphill battle with few allies among Republican elected leaders.
Today, it’s a different story. Trump’s political organization has become a juggernaut. Not only are most Republican elected leaders falling in line, but he has also installed allies controlling many levers of political power across the country. In state after state, Trump allies are running local Republican parties, serving as state representatives and in charge of political action committees.
It’s a political army ready to be mobilized at his beck and call. What he says — what his message is to them — matters because they follow.
To secure his power, he will do whatever he can to cast aside those who don’t show fealty. That includes threats, bullying and intimidation, like badgering and name-calling.
Referring to South Dakota’s Rounds in a statement after he appeared on ABC, for example, Trump said Rounds “just went woke,” called him a “jerk,” “weak,” “ineffective” and questioned whether he was “crazy or just stupid.”
He also called him a RINO, an acronym for an insult some conservatives reserve for more moderate Republicans they disagree with — Republicans in name only.
In the interview with NPR, he partially blamed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for Rounds and other senators feeling as though they can speak out and say — correctly — that Trump lost the election.
“Because Mitch McConnell is a loser,” Trump said.
Trump has called McConnell worse — and all because the Kentucky Republican has crossed Trump, blaming him for the insurrection on Jan. 6 and saying President Biden won, even if McConnell doesn’t do so forcefully every day.
It’s par for the course for Trump, who has demanded unflinching loyalty — and who chafes at truths he disagrees with, especially about him losing.
Trump has blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all because the Kentucky Republican has crossed the former president.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Won’t accept losing an election he lost
Many Republicans prefer to focus on Biden as this year’s congressional elections approach. Trump is pressing candidates in a different direction.
Josh Mandel, a pro-Trump Republican from Ohio, launched his campaign for U.S. Senate just weeks after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.
“I think over time we’re gonna see studies come out that [show] evidence of widespread fraud,” Mandel, a former state treasurer who is angling for Trump’s endorsement, told WKYC-TV.
In the year since Mandel made that prediction, the opposite has happened.
Even more evidence shows a free and fair election.
In one disputed state, Arizona, Trump allies held a widely criticized review of millions of ballots, but even Doug Logan, who led Cyber Ninjas, the firm that ran the review, couldn’t find much.
“The ballots that were provided to us to count in the Coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvass numbers,” Logan said.
As he does with any information or person he doesn’t like or disagrees with, Trump dismissed the findings in the NPR interview.
“Lying or delusional”
In the interview, Trump repeated a number of false claims about voting systems in the U.S., including that the discredited GOP-led ballot review in Arizona showed evidence of malfeasance — despite the fact that it also reaffirmed Biden’s victory.
Republican officials in Maricopa County, however, debunked the characterizations of Trump and his allies in a 93-page rebuttal issued last week.
“The people who have spent the last year proclaiming our free and fair elections are rigged are lying or delusional,” said Bill Gates, the GOP chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Asked why even Republicans in the state accepted the findings, Trump reverted to an old attack.
“Because they’re RINOs,” he said, “and frankly, a lot of people are questioning that.”
Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County election official and now an elections expert at Democracy Fund, was presented by NPR with a number of Trump’s claims about voting and noted that in the 14 months since the election, no proof of any of his claims has come to light.
“It hasn’t been presented in any of the courts. It hasn’t been surfaced in any official election audits, not by the Department of Justice, not by the FBI,” Patrick said. “Allegations of fraud hinge upon being able to produce actual instances of fraud — not merely thoughts, feelings or beliefs about it.”
To Republicans who know how elections work, the election has always been obvious.
“The facts show that it was President Biden who won fair and square,” said Trey Grayson, who used to run elections as the Republican secretary of state in Kentucky. “It wasn’t rigged.”
He’s thinking about those Republican T-shirts that said, “F*** your feelings.”
“And here we are looking at the 2020 election,” Grayson said, “and we are the ones who are basing it on feelings, not on facts, not on the law.”
The Pennsylvania example
Most Republican voters now say they feel the election was stolen, according to surveys. That gives Trump leverage with Republican candidates who want to win primaries this year.
In Pennsylvania, numerous Republicans are running for governor and senator. They’ve made lots of moves to prove their fealty to the former president. One candidate for governor is Bill McSwain, who happened to be a U.S. attorney during the 2020 election.
Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, a Republican running for Pennsylvania governor, has appealed for Trump’s support.
Matt Rourke/AP
“Bill McSwain left office without announcing any investigations or outcome of investigations for the 2020 election in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” said Chris Brennan of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered his story.
But then McSwain prepared to run for office. Last summer, he produced a letter for Trump, appealing for his support — and implying that he was blocked somehow from investigating unspecified claims of fraud.
“But it doesn’t actually say that,” Brennan said. “So even he, when you carefully read it, does not claim that he was blocked from investigating fraud.”
Trump nonetheless made the letter public and gave his own interpretation at multiple rallies.
“We have a U.S. attorney in Philadelphia that says he wasn’t allowed to go and check,” Trump said at a rally in Florida.
Grayson has watched similar stories unfold in multiple states.
“I think he’s been really active in moving 2022 candidates toward his point of view,” Grayson said. “The way I look at it is, I can’t imagine that the party on its own would be pushing this narrative if he weren’t pushing it.”
Repeatedly in the interview, Trump presses his party to adhere to his point of view and false claims, and he adapts his arguments to account for more and more proof that he lost. That’s a typical strategy among purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.
Trump did correctly note in the interview that he received more votes than any sitting president ever. But his broader point that that is somehow evidence that he won in 2020 is nonsensical, said Patrick, seeing as the election saw record turnout.
“Each election compares those candidates facing off in that election — it doesn’t matter how the numbers compare to the last election,” Patrick said. “It doesn’t matter how many points a team scored the last game or how many times Alabama has won the national championship. What matters is who has the most points or votes at the end of the game.”
For the record, the University of Georgia won the college football national championship Monday, defeating Alabama, 33-18. And Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump in the popular vote in 2020 and got 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
Repeated losses in the independent judiciary
Trump doesn’t have a case of widespread fraud.
He and his lawyers tried to prove that he did — and they failed. Many judges, including some appointed by him, ruled that way in dozens of cases.
Here’s a section of the interview on this:
NPR’S STEVE INSKEEP: Let me read you some short quotes. The first is by one of the judges, one of the 10 judges you appointed, who ruled on this. And there were many judges, but 10 who you appointed. Brett Ludwig, U.S. District Court in Wisconsin, who was nominated by you in 2020. He’s on the bench and he says, quote, “This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.”
Another quote, Kory Langhofer, your own campaign attorney in Arizona, Nov. 12, 2020, quote, “We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election.” And also Rudy Giuliani, your lawyer, Nov. 18, 2020, in Pennsylvania, quote, “This is not a fraud case.” Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud. They said in court they had no evidence of fraud. And the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.
TRUMP: It was too early to ask for fraud and to talk about fraud. Rudy said that, because of the fact it was very early with the — because that was obviously at a very, very — that was a long time ago. The things that have found out have more than bore out what people thought and what people felt and what people found.
When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don’t know what his game is, but I will just say this: You look at the findings. You look at the number of votes. Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?
INSKEEP: It is not true that there were far more votes than voters. There was an early count. I’ve noticed you’ve talked about this in rallies and you’ve said, reportedly, this is true. I think even you know that that was an early report that was corrected later.
TRUMP: Well, you take a look at it. You take a look at Detroit. In fact, they even had a hard time getting people to sign off on it because it was so out of balance. They called it out of balance. So you take a look at it. You know the real truth, Steve, and this election was a rigged election.
When pressed, it was excuse after excuse — it was “too early” to claim fraud, his attorney was no good, things just seem suspicious.
But it all comes back to the same place: He has no evidence of widespread fraud that caused him to lose the election.
The tone of the interview changed. Trump then hurried off the phone as he was starting to be asked about the attack on the Capitol, inspired by election lies.
A judge is considering whether Trump can be held liable for his actions in court.
If he can be, then Trump or his lawyers would someday have to answer the questions he didn’t answer before he cut short his conversation with NPR.
Audio for this story was produced and edited by Taylor Haney, Lilly Quiroz, Amra Pasic and H.J. Mai.
Ron just went and picked up his one month prescription of JARDIANCE . It cost him $522.00 because our insurance has a 420 dollar co-pay before they kick in. In two weeks I have to do the same. another $522.00 for a 30 day supply of medications. We can not afford a $1044.00 hit in one month just for one medication each on our fixed incomes. The drug companies are making record profits, the insurance companies are making record profits, all the costs are going up while the incomes are stagnate or going down as inflation rises. The people need help. The country is run by the wealthy and large corporations and they are sucking the very life out of the public. This is worse than any vampire movie. They are draining the country of its vitality, and the people of any resources to live. Scottie
Assuming this 14% holds across the whole Kroger workforce, that's around 65,000 people working at the fourth-largest private employer in the US — ranked 17th on the Fortune 500 — who've been homeless while keeping the country's grocery stores running, in a pandemic. https://t.co/9RWLYvduap
The painful truth. Concentrated wealth and power are tremendously unhealthy.
Kill the filibuster. Kill the legacy of white supremacy.
Kill the filibuster.
Projection. Every GOP accusation is an admission of guilt.
“As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.”
Get them all under oath. Then send them to prison for treason.
If you are a Republican who cares about the Constitution, you should be outraged. #Arizona
These are forged documents used by Trump cronies, yet they will lie and say Biden stole the election. This is just disgraceful.
Ted Cruz is trying to blame the FBI for J6 when Trump was President on Jan 6.
[Ray Epps is Arizona Oath Keeper chapter president and massive Trump supporter.]
the fakes make up news
FOX has ratings based on predetermined narratives. Their hosts do one thing and say another, just to create resentment and fear.
Republicans attack the messenger. They have no policy insights or actual ideas.
My favorite Tony Fauci is the one who’s had it with Rand Paul’s bullshit.
Although studies claim Omicron to be mild, there is no plausible reason to think that the highly-transmissible variant will not cause long Covid conditions among survivors. Though much remains unknown about omicron, experts say the variant could lead to long Covid, even with a mild case. Patients with long-term symptoms can experience crushing fatigue, irregular heart rhythms and other issues months after their initial Covid infection. The highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease than the Delta strain but it remains a “dangerous virus”, particularly for those who are unvaccinated, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. Scottie
Anti-transgender attitudes have long made bathrooms a dangerous place for trans men and women — a problem only made worse by the latest round of bathroom hysteria. But other women are also getting swept up by anti-trans discrimination, as bathrooms turn into places of harassment for anyone who doesn’t conform to rigid views of gender.
In a recent case that went viral, a cisgender (non-trans) woman was insulted while in a Walmart bathroom after another woman confused her for a trans woman, apparently because of her short hair. The incident, the woman said, led her to confront the kind of harassment and discrimination that trans people have faced in bathrooms for a long time.
That the current hysteria over bathrooms is leading to women, trans or not, getting harassed in bathrooms is, on top of plain awful, ironic. After all, harassment is one of the things those who oppose letting trans people use the bathroom for their gender identity supposedly want to prevent. They claim trans-friendly policies will allow men to disguise themselves as women, go into women’s bathrooms, and harass or assault women.
The claim is a myth: Multiple investigations have found states and schools that have had legal protections for trans people for years have never linked an instance of sexual assault or harassment in a bathroom to trans-friendly policies. (The only bathroom harassment historically related to trans people, in fact, seems to be harassment and discrimination against trans people.)
But it does seem like the bathroom hysteria is leading to some women getting harassed — not in the way opponents of trans rights worry about, but more along the lines of the discrimination and harassment trans people have faced for a long time while trying to use the bathroom. Here are a few examples.
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
After momentary confusion, she realized that the woman next to her thought — because of her pixie-style haircut and baseball cap — that she was transgender.
Toms, a 22-year-old from Naugatuck who works at a retail store in the Bethel-Danbury retail area around Walmart, posted a video “rant” about her experience on Facebook Friday that had been viewed more than 12,000 times by Sunday evening.
“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”
Case in point: the man who, um, heroically barged into a women’s restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco on Thursday to make sure that Jessica Rush, who manages a local health-food takeout place, was peeing in the proper place.
She was, for the record, and her situation isn’t particularly complicated. Rush was born and identifies as female and has no plans to change that. “I look very much like a girl,” she says. “I’m not trying to transition, nothing like that.”
But Rush wears her hair in a bleached blond fauxhawk and dresses androgynously. On Thursday, she was wearing a T-shirt from her alma mater, Texas Tech, with basketball shorts. As the man at Baylor explained after walking into the restroom behind her, it’s all very confusing. …
“When I saw you enter I thought you was…” the man says.
“A boy?” Rush offers.
“Yeah, it was kind of confusing.” Certainly she can see why. “You dress like a man,” he says several times as he walks away.
In the video, the unnamed woman tries to convince the two male officers and one female officer present that she is a woman, her friends shout in her support “she’s a girl”, which the officers ignore.
The police then ask the woman for identification to prove her sex. She rejects their demand, offended. The male officers then manhandle her out of the restroom, whilst calling her “sir”.
The police eventually tell the woman’s friends, who are still vouching for her female identity, “you can all leave if you want”.
Trans women and men have faced harassment and violence in bathrooms for a long time
Back in 2011, Chrissy Lee Polis captured national attention when teenagers attacked her after she used an empty women’s bathroom at a McDonald’s in Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reported:
There was a time when it seemed people from all over the country were talking about the 24-year-old. Many wanted to help her; others condemned her.
Polis became an unwitting symbol of the transgender community and the struggle for transgender rights when she stepped into a Rosedale McDonald’s one April evening. Two teen girls beat her that night. When an employee caught the assault on his cell phone, the video went viral, making headlines nationwide.
In a more recent case, in May, a security guard at a Washington, DC, grocery store allegedly pushed a trans woman out of the business after she tried to use a bathroom. The guard was later charged with simple assault. NBC4 Washington reported:
Ebony Belcher, 32, said she went to the Giant in northeast D.C. with a friend to pick up a delivery from the Western Union.
While at the Giant, she asked a store employee to point her to the restroom and passed a female security officer standing in the hallway.
The officer came into the restroom and told her to get out, according to Belcher.
“She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names,” Belcher said.
She said the officer put her hand on her shoulder and arm, grabbed her and pushed her out of the store.
These are just two examples of the discrimination trans people face in bathrooms on a regular basis.
A 2013 survey published by the Williams Institute, for example, found that 70 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents in the Washington, DC, area faced a negative reaction while trying to use a public bathroom, including 9 percent who reported physical assault. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 26 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents across the country reported denial of access to gender-appropriate bathrooms in educational settings, and 22 percent faced such denial in the workplace.
The same surveys also show that trans people face a lot of discrimination, harassment, and violence more broadly — at home, work, and school. So the harassment cisgender women are now dealing with in bathrooms is just a small sample of the discrimination that has plagued the trans community for years and years.
Understand this is entirely about if someone thinks you look as they think a woman should look. Are you feminine enough to satisfy them? They demand others conform to their standards of male and female. It’s part of an entitlement feeling when someone can demand to know person’s genitals, their private body parts. What a weird violation of culture norms now excepted is that a person has the right to demand to know or verify someone else’s covered private reproductive organs. How is that not a sexual offence? Scottie
When I wrote this cartoon for CNN last Thursday, I knew I would draw it whether they picked it or not. If they didn’t want it, no problem as I’d draw it and send it to my print and online clients. I had to come up with another one on the “defeated former president” after CNN selected this one. That’s when I came up with the cartoon on all the nicknames for Trump.
I was very happy Jane, this week’s editor and writer of the newsletter, chose this one.
Music Note: I listened to The Killers and Kings of Leon while drawing this one.
Signed prints:The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t…
Scottie's Playtime 