I am stunned at the projection of the republican party / right wing. Also they don’t even bother to try to stick to reality, saying the most wild things they can think of or have heard. The fact that a large section of the right loves and believes these wild of the wall things because the right has ruined the public education system in the US. Why do you think wealthy people send their kids to private schools? Because they deliberately destroyed public education so they have a steady stream of uneducated workers who won’t be able to advance and will work for low wages in any conditions. Plus uneducated people with no idea of history are much easier to control. I fear for the country if we cannot turn around the republican drive to make the US a whole owned company of the wealthy. People are still dying of Covid, more in red states that the governors deny the value of vaccines / masks. Hugs
“You just can’t make these things up. He said very definitively more than once that COVID is over and the pandemic is over.
“And because of that now – the team behind him, what I call that cabal in the White House – they have to keep this pandemic going so that they can spend more taxpayer money the way they want to.
“And, they think it helps them in the elections, having more people vote via mail-in ballot, making certain that they have that power and control. That’s what this is all about, always has been from day one.” – Sen. Marsha Blackburn, today on Fox.
As you may have noticed, “cabal” is Blackburn’s favorite word. She’s used it to describe the CDC, the FBI, teachers unions, and others.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) thinks the Biden admin. is deliberately prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic to help Democrats in the midterms:
"They have to keep this pandemic going … because they think it helps them in the elections having more people vote by a mail-in ballot." pic.twitter.com/RrLf0WJQfZ
We knew this even though the trump people denied it. DeathSantis did the same thing. Horrible waste of life because of pride and ego. Over 81 thousand people have died of Covid already and more still dying because they didn’t get the vaccines / boosters. The Florida surgeon general claims the vaccines are more harmful than Covid itself in what is laughingly called a joke of a study, which was not a study in any sense of the word. Hugs
Donald Trump Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg
Donald TrumpPhotographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg
The CDC bowed to the Trump administration’s demands to change the editorial process of its weekly scientific journal after warnings from then health secretary Alex Azar to “get in line,” a House investigation found.
The pressure faced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report‘s procedures was one of several instances of political interference by former President Donald Trump’s aides that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis identified in a report released Monday. The report was provided to Bloomberg Law ahead of the official release.
The latest subcommittee report details widespread attempts by Trump-era political appointees within the Department of Health and Human Services to interfere with the CDC, including tampering with the science and misuse of the agency’s quarantine authority in a way an agency division director described as “morally wrong.”
The CDC declined to comment on the report.
“This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement.
“As we continue to recover from the coronavirus crisis, we must also continue to work to safeguard scientific integrity and restore the American people’s trust in our public health institutions,” he said.
Azar and other political appointees called for MMWR editorial process changes in May 2020 out of concern the findings put Donald Trump’s White House at a political disadvantage, the congressional panel said. The changes granted political appointees at HHS access to summaries of what was coming out in the MMWRs for the first time, which the committee said “ultimately precipitated HHS officials’ attempts to interfere with the MMWRs over the following months.”
Azar told Bloomberg Law Monday that he “never pressured” Trump’s CDC director, Robert Redfield, “to modify the content of a single MMWR scientific article.”
“I always regarded the MMWR and other peer-reviewed scientific publications as sacrosanct,” Azar said in an email. “Indeed, I worked directly with Dr. Redfield to ensure that processes were in place to protect the integrity of the peer-review process for the MMWR when an internal CDC procedural defect was identified in early May 2020.”
Voice of CDC
The MMWR has long been considered the “voice of the CDC” and serves as the agency’s essential source for disseminating information quickly to inform public health and evidence-based decisions that drive policy. It was a report in the MMWR that in part prompted Anthony S. Fauci to pivot his career toward HIV research in 1981.
The allegations stem from former CDC Chief of Staff Kyle McGowan and Deputy Chief of Staff Amanda Campbell’s testimony to the House panel, in which they said Azar warned that “if the CDC would not get in line, then HHS would take control of approving the publication of the MMWRs.” McGowan and Campbell, who joined the agency during the Trump administration, left several months after those May 2020 allegations and started their own consulting firm.
“The committee’s report reflects a serious and fair look at what happened,” McGowan wrote in an email which included Campbell in the response.
Political appointees successfully changed or held up at least five MMWR reports and tried to interfere with at least 19 different reports out of concerns they would harm Trump politically, McGowan and Campbell said in the subcommittee report.
The report marks the culmination of a two-year investigation by the House panel and offers new details of allegations into how the Trump administration handled the Covid-19 response. The CDC historically has prided itself on making science-based, data-driven decisions to protect the public health, but the House panel concluded political interference caused lasting harm on CDC’s morale and credibility in the nation’s public health institutions.
Redfield told a Senate panel more than two years ago, “At no time has the scientific integrity of the MMWR been compromised, and I can say that under my watch it will not be compromised.” But Redfield told the House coronavirus committee that the Trump administration “compromised” CDC guidances on Covid-19. He said the process for developing coronavirus policy “got complicated” and gave him “PTSD,” or post-traumatic stress disorder. It also gave the White House budget outfit veto power, he said.
The House investigation also concluded the Trump administration blocked the CDC from holding its weekly press briefings for several months after Nancy Messonnier, who was then the CDC’s longtime immunization director, cautioned in February 2020 that a significant disruption could happen and the nation should prepare.
The former administration also installed political appointees who attempted to downplay the severity of the virus and misused its quarantine authority under Title 42 to close the southern border. CDC’s quarantine and global migration director, Martin Cetron, told the House panel that agency staff didn’t write the Title 42 order, allegedly saying, “It’s just morally wrong to use a public authority that has never, ever, ever been used this way. It’s to keep Hispanics out of the country.”
The Biden administration recently expanded Title 42 and coupled it with a humanitarian parole program under new rules aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from Venezuela.
The House report from the CDC marks the third in a series from the coronavirus subcommittee. A report released in August found similar attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to withdraw authorization of a Covid-19 treatment because it didn’t work. The first report released in June examined a controversial herd immunity approach to managing Covid-19 that would have sidestepped mitigation measures.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeannie Baumann in Washington at jbaumann@bloombergindustry.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cheryl Saenz at csaenz@bloombergindustry.com
(Updated with a statement from McGowan and Campbell in the 12th paragraph)
It has long been know that the we need higher prices to find or develop new drugs has been a dodge and a ruse. It is entirely for profit. Katie Porter showed that on during a House of Rep. hearing with a Pharma CEO and with his own testimony showed it was about personal profit for the company / himself / the investors. Hugs
A new study finds no correlation between R&D spending and outlandish drug prices.
At the end of September, a spot of good news: Relyvrio, a new drug for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—or ALS, a neurological disorder without a cure—was approved in the United States. The ALS community rejoiced; the drug’s authorization was described as a “long-sought victory for patients.”
But the next day, the price of the medicine was revealed: $158,000 a year. This was far higher than what the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit that analyzes health care costs, had estimated would be a reasonable price, which it deemed to be between $9,100 and $30,700.
Americans, though, probably weren’t shocked. Prescription drugs in the US cost about 2.5 times what they do in other countries, and a quarter of Americans find it difficult to afford them. Almost every new cancer drug starts at over $100,000 a year. And a 2022 study found that every year, the average price of newly released drugs is 20 percent higher.
How drug prices are set in the US is a mysterious black box. When rationalizing their lofty price tags, one of the most common reasons pharmaceutical companies will cite is that a high price is needed to makegoodon the money invested in research and development.
But is that true? “You hear it so much,” says Olivier Wouters, an assistant professor of health policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “That’s why I was like, well, let’s get some data, because I don’t believe it. I don’t think anyone believes it.”
So Wouters did just that. In September 2022, he and his colleagues published a new paper in JAMA that took this simple argument and put it to the test. In the study, they looked at the 60 drugs that had been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2009 and 2018 for which there was publicly available information about both R&D spending and pricing. And then they matched up the figures. “Essentially, it was like investigative journalism—check all the receipts, trace back in time on what they spend,” he says. If it were the case that R&D spending was the reason behind high drug prices, you’d expect to see a high correlation between the two. Instead, they found no correlation.
Wouters acknowledges that the sample size in the research is small, but this is because pharmaceutical companies keep most of their financial data under lock and key. If the industry wants to refute the conclusion reached in his paper, then pharmaceutical companies need to make more data available, he says.
To anybody in the field, the response to the paper’s finding is: Well, duh. We know what drives drug pricing, says Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s, ‘How far can I go? What will the market bear?’” Still, Emanuel says, it’s important to have empirical data like this study to refute the industry’s claim.
Intuitively, it feels plausible that a drug’s price would be linked to its R&D costs—the risky biz of innovation is super expensive, right? It turns out even this is highly contested. In 2020, Wouters published another paper in JAMA that dug into how much it actually costs to bring a new medicine to market, something experts have been trying to work out for decades. The number thrown around the most comes from one paper, which relied on confidential data provided by pharmaceutical companies, estimating that it takes around $2.8 billion. “These estimates are sort of shrouded in secrecy. There’s a lot of controversy around them,” says Wouters. He and his colleagues instead found the number shook out at closer to $1.3 billion, less than half the commonly held estimate. Substantially lower R&D costs would suggest that this spending shouldn’t have such a big bearing on drug pricing.
Every so often, there are small glimpses behind the curtains into how pharmaceutical companies actually decide on a drug price. An example of this is the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, which was put on the market in 2013 for a steep $84,000 per 12-week course. In 2015, an 18-month-long US government investigation that reviewed some 20,000 pages of internal company documents revealed that Gilead, the company that owned the drug, had set the high price as a way “to ensure its drugs had the greatest share of the market, for the highest price, for the longest period of time”—in essence, that it was prioritizing profit. In response Gilead said it “stand[s] behind the pricing of our therapies because of the benefit they bring to patients and the significant value they represent to payers, providers, and our entire healthcare system by reducing the long-term costs associated with managing chronic [hepatitis C virus].”
In other countries, the price paid for a drug is decided by bodies that look at the value the drug provides. In the United Kingdom, for example, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) lands on the value of a new medicine by working out how much it costs to give a patient an extra year of “quality life” in comparison to current treatments on offer. If the drug offers too little value, NICE won’t recommend it to the National Health Service. Countries like France and Germany negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to land on a price determined by the clinical benefits a drug provides compared to others on the market.
In the US, things may be beginning to slowly move in this direction. Under the new Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare will be allowed to negotiate prices for a small selection of drugs. However, Emanuel is skeptical it will actually have a big impact on drug price regulation, given the way that law was designed—too many loopholes, he says.
As for holding pharmaceutical companies to account, it shouldn’t fall to academics to do this, says Tahir Amin, founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit that addresses inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. “We need the government authorities and bodies to be doing this work,” he says of the analysis by Wouters’ team. “How are they setting policy when they do not have this information?”
Wouters doesn’t see his paper as a game changer, but it’s another weapon in the arsenal of those with power to refute excuses made by pharmaceutical companies. “I never thought this was a gotcha,” he says. “No, we always expected this to be the case. But I’m a firm believer that we need some evidence to point to.”
Imagine how scary it would be for anyone to be boxed in by cars with their little sister / family member with them, unable to leave and threatened by a group of angry people. People this is what the right wants, their enforcer thugs to threaten and terrorize the gays and the family of gay peoples. This is right out of the Russian playbook. My god, not only did the teachers and school let the kid be harassed at school which begs the question of how can a gay / lesbian / trans person get a quality education if they are worried about their safety. Hard to concentrate on the lesson if you are worried about being attacked and hurt. This is why LGBTQ+ kids need to see rainbow flags and to have teachers with rooms they can feel safe in or got to if they are feeling threatened. Seriously one respected person who reads the blog asked why rainbow pride stickers need to be on classroom doors or up in the classrooms. This is why. The point of the republican / right wing media attacks is to drive hate and anger at the LGBTQ+ community. They want this response. Remember the Florida legislator who wrote the don’t say gay bill said he did it because he was angered that gay / trans kids were being accepted by other kids and not targeted for abuse / harm. He wanted to see these LGBTQ+ kids beaten up, abused / hurt. demonized because it turns out he is a highly religious Christian. Son of a bitch! His gods feelings come before the feelings of living kids. Bastard! The longer the Republicans in office and the right-wing media push the evils of the LGBTQ+ kids the more abuse the kids thought to be gay are going to face. Which again is what the republicans / right wing wants. Do you know what would have happened to me if someone had come up to my father and told him I was a faggot? More bruises, broken bones, pain, and rapes. This shit is serious. Religious families will grill the kids and the kids will face going to conversion therapy or being thrown out of their homes. Again these attack were on the decline before trump and DeathSantis. Hugs
“I’m sick of being silent about it, so I finally spoke up.”
A California high school student’s TikTok post exposing the anti-LGBTQ bullying he’s been subjected to has gone viral.
Earlier this month, 18-year-old Landon Jones posted the video, which shows two separate instances of anti-gay bullying caught on camera. One incident, recorded by Jones in August, shows a group of young men surrounding his car in the parking lot of a Starbucks.
“This f**king fa***t,” one of the young men says.
In the video, Jones says the group apparently followed him and his sister to the Starbucks, surrounding his car so that he could not leave, while yelling slurs and threats.
The second incident was captured on Jones’s family’s home surveillance camera, shows a young man approach the front door of his house in the dead of night.
“Does Landon live here,” the teen asks when Jones’s father answers the door.
“Yeah, why?” Jones’s father says.
“Someone said to come up here because he’s a fa***t!” the young man shouts as he runs off.
“I remember being up in my room, hearing it, and I heard what he said. I immediately jumped out of bed and walked outside to see what was happening,” Jones told NBC News. “I had no sleep that night. I was honestly really upset. I was crying.”
“I have been called ‘fa***t’ countless times at school, and it literally doesn’t bother me at all,” Jones says in the TikTok video. “But the fact that they came to my house does.”
Jones said that was a turning point. On October 1, he shared the post on TikTok. The clip has received 1.4 million views and over 12,000 primarily supportive comments.
“I’m sick of being silent about it, so I spoke up finally,” Jones said.
He said that at least two of the young men involved in both incidents attend El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California where Jones is a senior. His parents told NBC News that they are unaware of any action the school has taken in response to the harassment.
But a spokesperson for the school district provided a statement saying that Saddleback Valley Unified School District and El Toro High School “together with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), immediately launched a comprehensive investigation to uncover the facts of the incidents.”
“We can confirm that the person seen in the surveillance video of the incident that took place at a private home is not a student in SVUSD,” said Wendie Hauschild, the school district’s director of communications and administrative services. “Due to the confidentiality that we are required by law to uphold for our students, as well as other minors, SVUSD is unable to share further information regarding the results of the investigation. SVUSD remains steadfast in its commitment to create inclusive, supportive, and safe environments for all students on our campuses.”
An Orange County sheriff’s spokesperson said that a school resource officer has spoken to “individuals that may or may not have been involved in this incident” or “possibly have knowledge of the incident.” While the young man who approached Jones’s home has not been identified, the officer said that the investigation remains ongoing.
Jones, meanwhile, has transitioned to virtual schooling as a result of bullying at El Toro High School.
I agree. The keyword in any relationship is consent. If the people involved can’t give consent for any reason then they are being forced against their will and that is wrong. I am thinking of women and young girls forced into marriage against their will. That includes sexual relations, if there is full consent from those involved then it is no one else’s business. I do not think on person in a marriage owns the other. Originally all the men owned the woman. Or many women in some places. If the people involved all agree that this is the way they want their lives / relationship to be, they should get to choose. Before anyone raises the false argument of “Well that leads to kids / animals / vacuum cleaners etc. getting married, think about it. Can any of those consent to marriage? No! Marriage is a legal contract between people controlled by the state and federal government. Yes religions like to claim they own marriage and god says it is this or that. But the fact is different religions have different views of what a marriage is, and for years religion did not even deal with marriage. “For much of the early Christian Era, the Church stayed out of weddings and let the state handle the union of man and woman. Finally, sometime after 800 AD, the Church began to perform weddings, and a few centuries later the Catholic Church made marriage one of the sacraments. Apr 26, 2017″ https://www.sagu.edu/thoughthub/the-history-of-marriage/#:~:text=For%20much%20of%20the%20early,marriage%20one%20of%20the%20sacraments. Marriages in the US are not done under the authority of the church but under the state. Churches / religions try to dictate what marriages should be, and are against all social remedies for bad marriages, but the US is not a theocracy so why should a person who is not part of a church / religion be forced to live under the ideas / dictates of a religion they don’t belong to? Also notice the other places that are expanding the idea of marriage. Hugs
The judge concluded that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same sort of legal protection given to two-person relationships.
New York City’s eviction court – the venue of a landmark same-sex relationship decision long before Obergefell v Hodges – is now the source of a legal opinion that comes down clearly on the side of polyamorous unions.
The decision came in the case of West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill, decided by New York Civil Court Judge Karen May Bacdayan, concluded that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same sort of legal protection given to two-person relationships.
The case revolves around three individuals. Scott Anderson and Markyus O’Neill lived together in a New York City apartment. Anderson held the lease, but was married to another man, Robert Romano, who lived at another address. After Anderson died, the building’s owner contended O’Neill had no right to renew the lease since he was just a “roommate” of Anderson’s and not “a non-traditional family member.”
The court concluded that there needed to be a hearing about whether Anderson, Romano and O’Neill were in a polyamorous relationship.
Before gay marriage was legalized in any state, Braschi v. Stahl Assocs. Co. was decided in 1989 and made the New York State Court of Appeals the first American appellate court to recognize that a two-person, same-sex relationship is entitled to legal recognition.
“Braschi is widely regarded as a catalyst for the legal challenges and changes that ensued,” Bacdayan wrote in her opinion. “By the end of 2014, gay marriage was legal in 35 states through either legislation or state court action. Obergefell v Hodges (2015), the seminal Supreme Court decision that established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right was also heralded as groundbreaking.”
“However,” wrote Bacdayan, “Braschi and its progeny and Obergefell limit their holdings to two-person relationships.” This case, Bacdayan wrote, “presents the distinct and complex issue of significant multi-person relationships.”
The judge cited legislation enacted since the advent of federally recognized same sex unions. “In February 2020, the Utah legislature passed a so-called Bigamy Bill, decriminalizing the offense by downgrading it from a felony to a misdemeanor. In June [2020], Somerville, Massachusetts, passed an ordinance allowing groups of three or more people who ‘consider themselves to be a family’ to be recognized as domestic partners. The neighboring town of Cambridge followed suit, passing a broader ordinance recognizing multi-partner relationships. The law has proceeded even more rapidly in recognizing that it is possible for a child to have more than two legal parents.”
“Why then,” posited the judge, “except for the very real possibility of implicit majoritarian animus, is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalized or blood relationships? Is ‘two’ a ‘code word’ for monogamy? Why does a person have to be committed to one other person in only certain prescribed ways in order to enjoy stability in housing after the departure of a loved one?”
The attorney for the property owner characterized defendant O’Neill’s affidavit, claiming himself as a non-traditional family member, as a “fairytale.”
The case returns to court after further investigation of the three individuals’ relationship.
Remember this is the same administration / surgeon general that Tildeb used to promote anti-trans nonsense. Politics dressed up as science. For those that did not believe me about Tildeb using fringe science and right-wing talking points, I give you this as exhibit 1! I keep trying to tell people they medical science is in, the studies done, and trans gender affirmative care is the recommended best practices for kids. Hugs
LADAPO: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, left, and Gov. Ron DeSantis are seen at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 6. Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service
This far into the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans have received mRNA COVID vaccines, following vast medical trials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration continue to review the safety of the vaccines, part of what the CDC calls “the most intense safety monitoring efforts in U.S. history.”
But somehow, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo knows best. Armed only with a skimpy “analysis” done by the state Department of Health — an analysis that is not peer-reviewed, has no named authors and has been blasted by the medical community — he warned last week that men ages 18-39 shouldn’t get the Moderna or Pfizer COVID shots, citing a higher risk of heart-related deaths.
The analysis itself states it should be considered “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution.” And yet the stance that Ladapo took on Twitter was far from cautious, insisting that “FL will not be silent on the truth.” Twitter initially pulled down Ladapo’s post, but then restored it
Hand-picked doctor
Ladapo, of course, is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general, and the Harvard-trained doctor knows it. He seems intent on carrying out the governor’s increasingly anti-vax agenda. Ladapo has promoted Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as legitimate treatments for COVID — they are not — and said in March that the state is against COVID vaccines for children. (The vaccines are considered safe and effective for children.) He vowed that Florida would “reject fear” when it comes to public health policy.
Reminder: More than 81,000 Floridians have died of COVID.
This latest report Ladapo is pushing has holes large enough to drive a car through. No amount of calling the resulting criticism an example of cancel culture — which is what a Florida DOH spokesman tried to do — will change that.
For one thing, it’s missing so many key details in the “methodology” section that Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said he can’t even figure out what the department actually did.
“If you were to submit that to any decent journal, it would be almost certainly rejected quickly,” Salmon said in the Miami Herald. “I think it’s irresponsible for a state government agency to put out something like that without sufficient detail.”
(We can’t ask the study’s authors because Ladapo refused to divulge them, calling that question a “fake” issue during a Washington Post interview.)
Salmon, who is leading a large global study looking into myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and the coronavirus vaccine, said the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh any risks. He was far from alone in criticizing Florida’s position.
Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, told the Herald the study failed to focus on both risks and benefits, looking only at risk. “It’s not a complete picture,” Salemi said. “It’s taking one part of it and using that seemingly in isolation to make a recommendation.”
The Washington Post — because Ladapo’s claims have attracted national attention — spoke to more than a dozen experts on vaccines, patient safety and study design who had concerns with the Florida analysis. Concerns included a too-small sample size, using data from death certificates that are frequently inaccurate and skewed results because the study tried to exclude anyone who had COVID or died from it.
Particularly telling: Ladapo said in The Washington Post interview that he hoped his mentors at Harvard University would support the methods used in the Florida study. The opposite happened. Health economist David Cutler said the Florida report was deeply flawed, he hoped it wouldn’t discourage people from getting vaccines and that Ladapo was wrong to base Florida’s vaccine policy on it.
He went further: “If I was a reviewer at a journal, I would recommend rejecting it,” Cutler told The Washington Post.
Vaccine disinformation has real consequences — and Ladapo’s post has been shared hundreds of thousands of times. A revealing study by Yale University researchers published last month found higher COVID death rates for Republicans compared to Democrats, after vaccines were available.
And there is hesitancy — or at least malaise — when it comes to the most recent booster shot. The new bivalent COVID boosters are widely available, and yet only about half of Americans have heard much about the shot, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. About a third of adults said they had gotten the booster or planned to.
COVID is still with us. There are vaccines that save lives. But people such as Ladapo, with his privileged platform in Florida, can do real damage. His assertions amount to a political position disguised as science and cloaked in the state flag. The danger is that some people may forgo the lifesaving vaccine because Florida, and Ladapo, told them to.
I wonder if the parents who called the school were anti-trans parents claiming it was a prank to get the school to undo her election as Homecoming Princess. Think how many kids voted in a large school and how could the prankers be a large enough group to swing the election to one person? Seems to me the callers were upset either their daughters lost the vote or that a trans girl won. So starting a rumor is the morally superior position? The saddest part of the story is that some of the kids were swayed by transphobia to not walk with her as the escort as tradition required. This is what the hate rhetoric of the right does, it teaches intolerance while further spreading the hate that spawns it. Hugs
“The negativity empowered me because it made me realize that they are going out of their way to notice me. They’re noticing how bold I am.”
A trans high school student in Cincinnati refused to let a cruel prank bring her down.
Cass Steiner is a sophomore at Mariemont High School and was recently voted Homecoming Princess by her classmates. She was thrilled to be the school’s first trans Homecoming Princess. Her entire family was celebrating.
“Originally, I was really, really, really excited,” Steiner told Fox 19. “Just the thought that I had a chance to make history here.”
Her mother, Kat Steiner, added that she “was absolutely thrilled” for her daughter – until the school counselor spoke to Cass. The counselor told her that some parents had contacted her to let her know Cass’s victory was potentially part of a prank by students.
“It kind of brought down my spirits a little bit,” Cass said.
“Your heart just breaks,” Kat added.
But Cass wouldn’t give in to bullies. The school apologized and gave her the chance to step back from her role as princess, but she said no.
“I don’t think that it was truly a joke,” she said. “I think that part of it really was genuine and that a lot of people have my back and do support me. That’s what gives me hope.”
Cass believes that several of her classmates have noticed how much happier she is since she has embraced her true self.
“I think it’s really empowering because finding myself as a whole was really hard, but now that I’m here and a better version of myself, I’m so much happier, and people in my class and my peers have noticed that.”
She told WLWT that holding onto her title shows her classmates she is proud of who she is.
“If anything, hearing the negativity empowered me because it made me realize that they are going out of their way to notice me. They’re noticing how bold I am.”
“If you did vote for me with negative intentions thank you because I still won the vote and I’m willing to advocate for my community as a whole,” she said.
And her community is advocating along with her. Students and parents showed up at the homecoming parade holding signs to support her. One read, “You are more than a princess. You are a QUEEN!” Another said, “We love our warrior.”
Parent Erin Satterwhite organized the group of supporters.
“Cassie’s story, it just spoke to me as a mom,” Satterwhite said. “And this is an inclusive, kind, supportive community and I wanted that message to be shared and not the original message that was shared.”
And because other members of the homecoming court refused to be Cass’s escort, the principal walked with her.
“Having those people escort me and be there for me is really empowering and showing that the school is there for me,” Cass said. “And they are 100 percent supportive.”
I would again like to point out this is not about protecting kids, it is entirely political. Look how often they attack Biden and the administration on a local school board issue. This is being used by the republicans to rile up their base with misinformation and to hurt a group of kids they don’t like. Hugs
: A supporter holds a sign that says “Support Trans Youth” in Washington Square Park on the 8th Annual Trans Day of Action on June 22, 2012 in New York City. Photo: Shutterstock
In a victory for trans Ohioans, the Ohio State Board of Education decided to delay voting on an anti-trans resolution that would ban trans girls from women’s sports teams, force teachers to out trans students to their parents, and ban classroom discussions on LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third grade.
The resolution was introduced by board member Brandon Shea and rejects a proposed rule from the Biden administration to apply Title IX anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ students nationwide.
It aligns with a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s proposal put forth by Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost (along with other state attorneys general) and states that sex is an “unchangeable fact” and that “there are observable, quantifiable, and immutable differences between males and females.”
“Denying the reality of biological sex destroys foundational truths upon which education rests and irreparably damages children,” it declares.
The resolution blasted the Biden administration for “federal overreach” and criticized its assertion that schools who fail to adhere to gender anti-discrimination policies could lose federal funding for free and reduced lunch programs.
Activists, teachers, parents, students, and the like showed up in droves to testify against the resolution – after many in favor of it also spoke.
“The mental, emotional and psychological toll will be huge if it is passed because it takes away protections from the students who need those protections the most,” said Rev. Andrew Burns of the King Avenue United Methodist Church. “And I would be one of the people who would have to clean up the mess left behind.”
After four hours of public comments, trans rights won the day, and the board decided to delay a vote on the measure.
Happening now… The waiting room is overflowing in Ohio as people pack the building in order to speak out against a policy that will force teachers to misgender Ohio trans students and ban them from bathrooms statewide. pic.twitter.com/x4ZYafOd5t
In a 12-7 vote, the board decided to send the resolution to an executive committee. Some board members believe it will probably die there, according to Cleveland.com. A softer version of the proposal will also reportedly be considered by the committee.
But the decision is still a huge victory.
Activist Erin Reed tweeted, “I can’t overstate how big a victory we just won in Ohio for trans people was. We got a boardroom full of Republican school officials to vote AGAINST moms for Liberty anti trans policies. The activists speeches objectively swayed things. The anti-trans group was stunned.”
People like Rep Clock, who has proposed legislation to detransition all trans youth, now will see that his own bill is enormously unpopular and will result in major blowback.
Reed continued to explain that the vote shows that being anti-trans is becoming an extreme position, also praising Jon Stewart for his recent skewering of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R) for the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for youth.
“The same arguments were repeated multiple times in the testimony,” Reed continued. “Ultimately though the credit goes to the activists who showed up. It was a pleasure to watch this and help mobilize from the VERY beginning. The fight isn’t over in Ohio. It isn’t over anywhere. but we won one for the kids today.”
Ultimately though the credit goes to the activists who showed up. It was a pleasure to watch this and help mobilize from the VERY beginning.
The fight isn’t over in Ohio. It isn’t over anywhere.
Now that you have read the article I want to point out several things. First l want you to look at the trans man in the video above. This is a man. However republicans want to force this man to use women’s restrooms. For those women that say they would be uncomfortable knowing a trans person was using the same bathroom as they were, tell me you as a woman wouldn’t be uncomfortable seeing this man entering the female bathroom with you. This is the problem first with judging gender on looks, and second this is the end result of the republicans anti-trans agenda. Second the anti-trans people tried to make sure that they spoke first and took as many spots as they could, knowing that many board meetings have a time limit and they hoped to run out the clock so the trans positive people could speak. Also notice that the anti-trans activists used lies, myths, debunked talking points, to the point of claiming that trans people simply did not exist. They throw so much false misleading and wrong information out that as one of the people said it would take longer than the meeting like refute them all. It is called a Gish gallop. But what was nice was a real geneticist who destroyed the anti-trans arguments with scientific medical facts, not that the anti-trans people would ever listen to facts. Below is the unrolled tweets from the story. Hugs
Happening now… The waiting room is overflowing in Ohio as people pack the building in order to speak out against a policy that will force teachers to misgender Ohio trans students and ban them from bathrooms statewide.
I know the people fighting on the ground. People like @CamomileOgden who have devoted so much to ensuring this doesn't go through.
Unfortunately Moms 4 Liberty has shown up to this meeting, unlike last time where all speakers were against this policy.
We've already had two speakers propose that people shouldn't be able to transition up to 25 years old because of "brain development."
And now there's a teacher saying that trans youth are a sign that "society is in decay"
I'm being told that the Moms4Liberty folks snagged the first 20 spots, and then later spots will be heavily opposed to the measure.
Its still a nonstop stream of people speaking in favor of the resolution. Soon the flavor of speakers will change. There seems to have been some shenanigans in how approved speakers were handled.
We are finally getting to the speakers in opposition to the policy.
"We already know how this policy works… the state practiced this policy for years and it killed LGBTQ+ people."
Oh cool cool cool, now they are saying that "[transgenderism] is moral decay in our public institutions that is growing like a cancer spread by globalists."
Reverend Andrew Burns of the United Methodist Church is speaking passionately against the measure.
This girl is AMAZING and is making an economic argument for rejecting this bill. She’s so good! I missed her name.
Getting word that there has been a disturbance outside of the hearing and mood is tense. Many speakers are now effectively speaking against this policy. I hope to clip some later.
This trans man speaking is amazing. "I am a trans man. I WAS one of the students who would be affected by this policy."
"I'm here today for all the trans kids in Ohio who are not able to be here to speak up for themselves"
I'll get his name later when I clip.
Amanda Erickson from Kaleidoscope Youth Center is AMAZING.
She's speaking on behalf of students who gave her quotes.
She says, "You are actively failing the students you have been elected and appointed to serve"
This geneticist is absolutely ripping the measure and teaching them about genetics and how there are hundreds of intersex conditions, and that "Sex is NOT binary"
Now a speaker is comparing trans acceptance to "Hitler youth"
🙄
"gender confusion" is the most garbage transphobe dogwhistle.
We're not confused about our gender – YOU are.
Although early speakers were ALL in favor of the resolution, it has been a nonstop wall of those opposed.
This is great. People are speaking powerfully and persuasively.
Oh look who else it is! This woman also spoke in favor of the Ohio bill to detransition all trasn youth.
Her SON has transitioned and is now an adult, and is living away from her.
She's mad at that so she's trying to stop youth transition.
You can see the previous speaker when she spoke earlier this year.
Her son has repeatedly stated that he is trans and is an adult and does not support this.
Ohio HB454 which would detransition all trans teens in Ohio, Rep Liston @Liston4Ohio asked the non-affirming parent of a trans son (now 18 and free) if she believes trans people exist.
She, like many others asked, does not. All of these witnesses deny trans people ENTIRELY. pic.twitter.com/qJUFS9cbTA
The ever amazing Cam Ogden just spoke, I didn't get a screenshot of her, but she pointed out how so many lies have been spoken and debunking them would take all the time in the world, and how the board should take more time to address and research the truth. @CamomileOgden 💜
I will clip the 2 or 3 best moments a little bit later this evening and probably post them in separate posts as well as to my TikTok.
Young republican speaking out in favor by saying that Biden "changed title IX by executive order" (All he did was interpret gender, as title IX law does not provide such an interpretation)
But its particularly rich to see Republicans complaining of executive actions.
The mother of a trans former student:
"How can you say that trans students should be included when you say they don't even exist?"
Public testimony is over – they will proceed to vote this evening.
Please tell the Ohio Board of Education to protect trans kids, not force teachers to misgender them, and not to ban them from bathrooms of their gender.
We are getting closer and closer to a vote that will determine the fate of so many trans students in Ohio…
Here we go…
They have moved to refer this motion back to committee (which would, for the time being, delay the motion for quite a while)
The vote on this motion has NOT happened yet. Lets hope this motion passes, if not then it will be outright voted on.
Sorry I want to be clear- they have MOVED to send it back to committee, but that motion must now be voted on. Its not a victory or defeat yet – lets see what happens with this vote.
"these kids exist… and there has been absolutely nothing said about what we can do for these kids."
– Member arguing to send this back to committee.
They are currently debating back and forth through parliamentary procedure and everything is kind of running into each other.
The Ohio Board of Education is completely trapped in a Roberts Rules loop.
We may get a vote from them in the next century.
THE OHIO BOARD OF EDUCATION HAS VOTED TO SEND THE PROPOSAL BACK TO COMMITTEE!
They have decided not, at this time, to force teachers to misgender their trans students and ban them from bathrooms.
Thank ALL the activists who did this.
The vote to send back to committee was done 12-7.
I have clips coming of many moments today. Thank you all for following along.
Next stop – Virginia, where we must defeat a very similar proposal.
Scottie's Playtime 
