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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is not going to allow one lone judge to dictate whether the children of Ohio are protected from “transgender” surgeries and hormones, he shared in an interview with The Daily Signal.
Yost asked the state’s Supreme Court to intervene after Judge Michael Holbrook issued a temporary restraining order for House Bill 68, the Saving Ohio Adolescents From Experimentation, or SAFE, Act, on Tuesday.
That law bars physicians from performing “transgender reassignment” surgeries on children and from prescribing cross-sex hormones or drugs to block children’s puberty. It also would allow students to sue if they are deprived of a fair playing field in sports due to transgender activism (such as a boy who “identifies” as a girl playing on a girls’ volleyball team) and would protect parents’ rights to raise their children according to their biological sex.
A supermajority of Republican lawmakers voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s controversial veto of the bill in January, and before Holbrook blocked it, it was scheduled to go into effect on April 24.
On Monday, Yost, the Medical Board of Ohio, and the state of Ohio filed an emergency motion for a writ of prohibition, asking that Holbrook be ordered to modify his temporary restraining order to “comply with Ohio statutory and procedural limitations.”
The Ohio attorney general discussed the move and what he hopes will ensue from here in an interview with The Daily Signal.
“This is actually a trick that the Left has been using for a long time,” he explained. “Go to court with a couple of sympathetic plaintiffs, get a court order restraining the law from applying to anybody anywhere, and then use it to avoid majority rule and democratic processes that we have here in America.”
“It’s contrary to the law, it’s a misuse of the judicial process, and its fundamentally anti-Democratic,” he said.
Listen to the interview below:
The post Ohio Attorney General Breaks Down Leftist Legal ‘Trick’ to Block GOP Efforts to Protect Kids appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The attorney general of Ohio has asked the state’s Supreme Court to intervene in a matter involving an Ohio judge who temporarily blocked a law protecting children from “transgender” surgeries and procedures.
Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook had issued a temporary restraining order for House Bill 68, the Saving Ohio Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, on Tuesday.
That law bars physicians from performing “transgender reassignment” surgeries on children and from prescribing cross-sex hormones or drugs to block children’s puberty. It also would allow students to sue if they are deprived of a fair playing field in sports due to transgender activism (such as a boy who “identifies” as a girl playing on a girls’ volleyball team) and would protect parents’ rights to raise their children according to their biological sex.
A supermajority of Republican lawmakers voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s controversial veto of the bill in January, and before Holbrook blocked it, it was scheduled to go into effect on April 24.
On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, the Medical Board of Ohio, and the state of Ohio filed an emergency motion for a writ of prohibition, asking that Holbrook be ordered to modify his temporary restraining order to “comply with Ohio statutory and procedural limitations.”
“Ohio statutes, civil rules, and equitable principles authorize Ohio courts to grant preliminary injunctive relief only to parties before the court and only as to provisions that allegedly harm them,” the complaint says. “Respondent’s injunction vastly oversteps those express limitations on the court’s authority.”
The Ohio attorney general also argues that immediate relief is required because the judge and the Common Pleas Court of Franklin County “patently and unambiguously lack jurisdiction to grant preliminary equitable relief to millions of individuals not before the court, or to enjoin statutory provisions that plaintiffs do not allege harm them.”
Additionally, the filing states the judge’s order “foments uncertainty” in a “broad array of institutions and actors” that are affected by the law, including hospitals, schools, and universities.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio had filed a lawsuit on behalf of a child who allegedly identifies as transgender and that child’s family. When Holbrook temporarily blocked the law, ACLU of Ohio’s legal director, Freda Levenson, said in a statement that the ACLU was “thrilled and relieved” that “transgender youth can continue, for the near term at least, to access medically necessary health care.”
“Our legal battle will continue until, we hope, this cruel restriction is permanently blocked,” Levenson said. “Ohio families have a constitutional right to make personal health care decisions without government intrusion.”
Yost’s Monday filing came a week after the United States Supreme Court paved the way for Idaho to enforce its law protecting children from so-called gender-affirming care, or transgender surgeries and procedures. A judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, had temporarily blocked Idaho’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act in December, The Washington Post reported.
After Idaho appealed the block and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit refused to change the lower court opinion, Idaho asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
“Denying the basic truth that boys and girls are biologically different hurts our kids,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl R. Labrador said in a statement praising the ruling, The Washington Post reported. “No one has the right to harm children, and I’m grateful that we, as a state, have the power—and duty—to protect them.”
The post After Judge Blocks Law Protecting Kids From Transgender Surgeries, Ohio Calls on State Supreme Court to Intervene appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Eva Edl turned 10 years old in a World War II-era death camp.
She believes she may die in a United States prison.
Charged by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, Edl faces up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines. She is about to turn 89 years old.
“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said thoughtfully in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get ready. Haven’t talked to a funeral director yet.”
“I’m just being sensible,” she added. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”
Drawing on her brutal experiences with communism in what was then Yugoslavia, she refuses to underestimate those who have the power to oppress her, recalling how her mother couldn’t believe they were in danger until it was too late.
“We haven’t done anything wrong! Who would harm us?” she remembered her mother saying.
“Then our whole people was destroyed,” Edl said. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.”
As Danube Swabians, an ethnic German-speaking group, Edl and her family were rounded up in the aftermath of World War II by soldiers under the direction of Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito.
She described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to a concentration camp in Yugoslavia at age 9: “We were packed body to body, and being a small child, I could hardly breathe. We had no food, no water … .”
The camp (named Gakowa, or Gakovo, according to Edl) was “primitive,” she said, and its purpose was the extermination of the Danube Swabians. Many of those in Gakowa with Edl died from starvation or disease and were buried in mass graves.
She slept on straw. She had her one dress. Very little food.
“You couldn’t wash your clothes because all you have is that one dress,” she explained. “So, you were filthy. And then we had diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and rats and anything you could imagine, and we had no toilet facilities to contain all that. We had an outhouse. Well, how do you have masses of people with diarrhea just go to one outhouse? So, you know what happened. And filth and disease went rampant.”
Her mother, forced to work as a slave laborer in the fields, escaped and smuggled herself into the camp in a wagon full of corn, determined to find her young daughter among the thousands of prisoners, Edl says. Soldiers poked through the load of corn with bayonets, just barely missing her mother.
Edl’s mother finally found her young daughter lying on a pile of rancid straw, starving, too weak to walk, “festering” with lice and other creatures.
The scene was so horrific that it caused Edl’s mother to rush outside and vomit, although Edl did not learn this until years later. At the time, she was so weak she could barely register her mother’s presence, and she could scarcely recognize her mother, thin and emaciated as she was. But it seemed to Edl a miracle that they had been reunited—even in a concentration camp.
“I just couldn’t believe it was her,” she explained. “It took a while.”
Edl’s stories of her time in the death camp feature many brave women: her grandmother, who voluntarily chose to go to the concentration camp with her in order to protect her; her mother, who repeatedly risked death to reunite her children and get them safely to the United States; and her sister, who, forced by a soldier to dig her own grave, looked him in the eye and dared him to kill her. (He didn’t, according to Edl.)
So, it should come as no surprise that Edl, after she came to the United States in 1955 and was exposed to a human rights crisis she had never before heard of, decided that she must do whatever was in her power to save lives.
Edl took an English course around 1968, and during the course, someone brought up whether or not the United States should legalize abortion. (Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that there was a constitutional right to abortion, did not come about until 1973.)
“I didn’t know what [abortion] meant,” Edl said. She was blown away by the explanation she received. As she spoke with The Daily Signal, she reflected that an unborn baby is not a tumor, but a life. No one should have the ability to just end a baby’s life, she said.
“I tried to speak up in that subject, but I must have done a very bad job because I don’t think I convinced the person that I was speaking with. And after that, I just brought the subject up all the time because it bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children.”
During the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, she first learned that abortions don’t take place in a secretive, underhanded fashion; rather, that unborn babies are aborted within abortion clinics, places that openly advertise their gruesome services. Edl was shocked.
Hundreds of pro-life protesters demonstrated outside the convention beginning in July 1988. In October 1988, police arrested about 400 protesters in connection to those demonstrations, The New York Times reported.
It was during that time period, after discussing the matter with her husband and getting his blessing, that Edl joined the protesters as they prayed outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta and attempted to dissuade women from going inside and aborting their babies.
“We are doing what we are condemning others for,” Edl says she told her husband at the time. “This is what people should have done for us.”
She was arrested that day with many others, led by Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry.
Edl says the police treated them brutally, dislocating the arms of many of the protesters arrested. The pro-life activists had been warned that police were prepared to be brutal, she explained, and to avoid any appearance of accosting police, the activists crawled on their knees rather than walked.
“I was weeping the whole time,” she said. “I must have left a trail of tears … .”
She was inconsolable that America would even consider aborting its unborn.
“America, in my eyes, was this country of justice and opportunity and everything that is good,” she said. “A beacon for us, over there, that didn’t know what all that meant, because we had nothing but oppression from whoever was ruling us at the time.”
When an officer put his hand on her shoulders, she froze, as she had been instructed.
“I heard somebody say, ‘Just use your nightstick,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, here they come. They’re going to club me.’ They just put the club, the nightstick, behind my arms. They hung me on it and nearly dislocated my shoulders, and just threw me on the bus. Other people got their shoulders totally dislocated; others got their heads bashed in. Some ended up in the hospital.”
That was her first “rescue”—the term that pro-life activists use for their attempts to stop abortions from taking place at an abortion clinic. Under the FACE Act, such activity is considered a crime.
The FACE Act prohibits use of force, obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with “reproductive health care services.” Though it theoretically protects houses of worship and pregnancy resource centers, as well as abortion clinics, the Biden administration’s Justice Department has largely used FACE to prosecute pro-life activists like Edl.
Since 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department has hit a total of 40 pro-life activists with FACE-related charges at five different rescues, or “blockades” as the DOJ calls them.
Edl describes a rescue in the following way: “We would put our bodies in front of the entrance of the abortion clinic, which I call the ‘death camp,’ so nobody could come in and kill the babies.”
Since that October 1988 incident, Edl says, she has been part of more than 50 rescues throughout the United States. She also says that she has been arrested about 50 times.
Now, she faces prison time.
“To the best of my knowledge, I am facing around 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines,” she said.
The Justice Department has thrice charged Edl with violating the FACE Act, first for an “August 2020 blockade” of a Sterling Heights, Michigan, abortion clinic; second for an April 2021 “blockade” in Saginaw, Michigan; and third for a March 2021 incident at a Nashville, Tennessee, abortion clinic. The DOJ charged eight defendants in the Sterling Heights incident and 11 defendants in the Nashville incident.
Edl maintains that she never committed any violence against those at the abortion clinics. (The DOJ would not respond to requests for comment about its charges against her.) She says that her actions are completely justified, given that she is trying to save the lives of babies about to be aborted.
“Let me liken it to something,” Edl explained thoughtfully as we discussed her arrests around the country. She referred back to her time in Gakowa. “When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear, and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train? The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did.”
She has heard stories that people stood by the roadside and wept as the cattle cars went by. “But that didn’t help us any,” she said.
“So, when we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic, we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak with women, and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies and let their babies live,” the death camp survivor said.
“After all,” she added, “we offer them everything there is, including adoptions. I’ve offered to adopt babies on the spot … we’re standing between the killer and the victim.”
Congress passed the FACE Act in 1994, and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law that same year. Spearheaded by the now-deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the legislation was a response to attacks on abortionists and abortion clinics. Pro-life advocates made sure that the legislation included clauses stating that it also protects churches and pregnancy resource centers.
In recent months, some conservative lawmakers and activists have called for the legislation to be repealed, arguing that it has been weaponized against pro-life activists.
They point to the large number of DOJ FACE charges against pro-life activists, noting that hundreds of churches and pregnancy resource centers have been attacked by pro-abortion vandals since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. The DOJ has charged only five pro-abortion vandals in connection with attacks on Florida pregnancy centers and an Ohio pregnancy center.
It appears that no vandals have been charged with FACE for attacking churches.
Edl, who has followed the FACE Act and its application since its inception, said she was arrested in Kennedy’s office when she went to talk to him about it in the 1990s.
“Instead of talking to us, he had us arrested,” she said of Kennedy.
She believes that she and her fellow pro-life activists are being targeted through the FACE Act because they “are in the way of [the Biden administration’s] agenda.” She has lived through 13 presidents in her lifetime, and she says that Biden is the worst of them.
Edl and the other defendants accused of violating the FACE Act have said that they are not allowed to show images or pictures in their trials. They are not allowed to say that they acted in order to save lives—the lives of unborn babies.
At the end of the day, however, she seems very at peace about the possible penalties. She’s getting her affairs in order. She had a bench trial in federal court in Nashville, where a federal judge found her and several others guilty of violating the FACE Act.
Edl and the other three defendants face a maximum of six months in prison, five years of supervised release, and fines of up to $10,000 in this case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.
She will be sentenced July 30, she said. And her next trial is in federal court in Detroit on Aug. 6.
“I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred,” she said simply. “Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids.”
“And murder is forbidden by God.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: She Survived a Death Camp. Facing Biden DOJ Charges, She Is Prepared to Die in Prison appeared first on The Daily Signal.
House Democrats released an agenda Thursday that includes a vow to codify a right to so-called gender-affirming care—transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers.
The promise came within the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ agenda, which House Democrats first shared with NBC News. That agenda includes a slew of left-wing interests, including promises of a higher minimum wage and stronger antitrust laws.
“If the progressive base is not excited and enthusiastic—and if they don’t feel like we are trying to earn their votes and that they are important—then I think the horrific idea of a second Donald Trump presidency could become reality,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the progressive caucus, told NBC News in an interview. “We cannot afford to let that happen. And we won’t.”
Although NBC claims that the agenda goes “lighter on cultural issues,” under the category “advancing justice,” it promises to “codify the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, including gender-affirming care and health care.”
Jayapal did not respond to requests for comment for this article explaining what, exactly, codifying a right to “gender-affirming care” would entail.
In March 2023, she joined with other Democrats in introducing a “Trans Bill of Rights,” citing the rise in parental rights laws, laws protecting kids from gender transitions, and laws prohibiting boys from participating in girls and women’s sports.
“Day after day, we see a constant onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation coming from elected officials. Today, we say enough is enough,” Jayapal said at the time. “Our Trans Bill of Rights says clearly to the trans community across the country that we see you, and we will stand with you, to ensure you are protected and given the dignity and respect that every person should have.”
That legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include gender identity as “protected characteristics.” It would also amend federal education laws to say that they protect kids from being discriminated against based on gender identity.
The Trans Bill of Rights also called for ensuring that “every child has the right to grow up in a supportive environment by having their authentic identity respected in the classroom, ensuring they can participate in school sports with their peers, and ensuring access to an inclusive curriculum.”
It further called for “expanding access” to trans surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers and codifying rights to abortion and contraception.
Jayapal told NBC News that progressive Democrats assume “this is an agenda for a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.”
She added: “We have to excite our base. We have to show them what the path forward is—not just say, ‘This is the most important election of your life, and we expect you to vote.’ I don’t think that’s going to turn people out. And so, I think this agenda, really, speaks to the needs of poor people, working people, progressives across the country who want us to make that case to them.”
“We are not seeing the momentum that we would like to see,” she told NBC. We’re going to have a tough election. … We know we’re going to have to put together that progressive coalition. And I think this is the thing that allows us to say, “‘Look, here’s what we’re fighting for.’”
The post House Democrats Vow to Codify ‘Rights’ to Trans Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra refused on Tuesday to condemn or even distance himself from abortions of unborn babies who are ready to be delivered.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Becerra repeatedly told Sen. John Kennedy that he supports the abortion limitations that were encompassed in Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June 2022, when asked if he supports aborting babies up until the moment of birth.
Kennedy, R-La., pressed Becerra: “Would you support making it illegal to abort a baby, if the mother is healthy, and the baby is healthy, on the day before that baby is scheduled to be born?”
WATCH:
.@SenJohnKennedy to HHS Secretary Becerra: "Would you support making it illegal to abort a baby, if the mother is healthy, and the baby is healthy, on the day before that baby is scheduled to be born?"
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 16, 2024
Becerra refuses to directly answer.
pic.twitter.com/uSuX9RO1NI
The HHS secretary would not directly respond to the question, claiming that no one wants to get abortions so late in pregnancy.
“I certainly would support the reestablishment of Roe v. Wade,” he responded, adding, “Senator, if you talk to any woman, she’ll tell you that she uses common sense in making her decisions.”
Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt similarly pressed the HHS secretary on Kennedy’s line of questioning.
“If Roe v. Wade were the law of the land, and a woman wanted to take the life of her child the day before her child was due, or the day after her child was due, then you support her ability to do that?”
She followed up on this by adding: “There’s seven states in this country, and the District of Columbia, that allow you to take the life of a child the moment before a child is born, so clearly you support a woman’s right to choose to do that?”
Becerra told Britt that the example she gave was “fiction.”
“Can you give me a particular example?” he asked.
“If it actually is fiction, then why not say no?” she asked. “That that is out of the realm of possibility?”
WATCH:
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra refused today to condemn the abortion of a baby that is about to be born: “The example you gave is fiction.”@SenKatieBritt: “Then why not say no?”
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 16, 2024
pic.twitter.com/kLQFnZl1HS
Britt then went on to passionately describe a graphic abortion procedure in which the abortionist crushes and dismembers the unborn baby, delivering the baby breech, opening the baby’s head with scissors, and sucking out the baby’s body.
“If that child is then delivered alive, do you believe that the child on that table, that we should be able to save that child, or do you believe that our taxpayer dollars give this woman the right to say, ‘Don’t save my child?’” she asked.
Becerra is among many officials in President Joe Biden’s administration who refuse to specify what abortion restrictions, if any, they support. Becerra did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.
The post WATCH: HHS Secretary Won’t Condemn Abortions Up Until Birth appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Recently appointed 4th Circuit Judge Nicole Berner is legally married to the pro-abortion lawyer who represented Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her.
The Washington Post describes Berner as “the first openly gay judge and the first labor lawyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit,” which covers Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Berner, who is also pro-abortion, formerly served as a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood, where she focused on “protecting and expanding access” to chemical abortion drugs.
Debra Katz represented Ford in her high-profile #MeToo accusations against Kavanaugh. In subsequent remarks, Katz said that her client was partially motivated to accuse Kavanaugh out of a desire to protect Roe v. Wade, the monumental Supreme Court case that was overturned in June 2022.
Ford recently reappeared in the national news cycle through the announcement of her upcoming book, “One Way Back,” a memoir about her experience accusing Kavanaugh.
Katz issued a joint statement at the time with fellow attorney Lisa Banks, saying, “Five years ago, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s courageous testimony changed the world. She told the truth to the United States Senate, she stood up to enormous public pressure, and she sparked a national reckoning on sexual assault. Her bravery empowered countless survivors to speak out and seek justice.”
“We are proud to have fiercely represented her during the Senate proceedings,” they added. “The impact of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony changed American culture. We stand beside Dr. Blasey Ford and all our brave clients who have come forward to hold powerful individuals accountable.”
The book was published on March 19, the same day that Berner was confirmed to the court. Representatives did not immediately share with The Daily Signal whether this was a coincidence.
During Berner’s nomination hearing in December, Republicans grilled her about her past statements and related political topics, including the Kavanaugh confirmation, according to The Washington Post.
“I believe Justice Kavanaugh, just like every other justice of the Supreme Court, was legitimately confirmed, and were I to be confirmed, I would follow his opinions and the opinions of every justice,” she told the Republicans present at the hearing.
“The role of a judge is a very different role than that of an advocate,” she added.
Pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood Action Fund celebrated her confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in late March in statements that suggest confidence that she will consistently side with abortion advocates.
Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said that Berner “knows firsthand the evolving state of our nation’s reproductive and other fundamental rights,” and Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju emphasized that Berner “understands that reproductive freedom is a fundamental right.”
CONFIRMED: Nicole Berner to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
— Senate Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryDems) March 19, 2024
Ms. Berner is a highly experienced litigator, as well as a steadfast advocate for workers’ rights, reproductive rights, and civil rights for all.
She’s also now the first LGBTQ+ judge to serve on this court. pic.twitter.com/2b980Mzdd3
Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh sparked a media circus, stories filled with debunked anonymous sources, a Senate investigation, a highly televised Senate hearing, and more. The Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately found “no evidence” to corroborate the claims against the Supreme Court justice, who was confirmed to the court on Oct. 5, 2018.
“After an extensive investigation that included the thorough review of all potentially credible evidence submitted and interviews of more than 40 individuals with information relating to the allegations, including classmates and friends of all those involved, Committee investigators found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against Justice Kavanaugh,” the 414-page report says.
Katz has been described as “the feared attorney of the #MeToo movement.” She is a founding partner of Katz Banks Kumin LLP, where she focuses on sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation.
In video footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation in 2019, Katz revealed that putting “an asterisk next to” Kavanaugh’s name before “he takes a scalpel” to Roe v. Wade was “part of what motivated” Ford to speak out.
“In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court,” Katz explained in April 2019 at the University of Baltimore’s 11th Feminist Legal Theory Conference.
Why would a competent lawyer say this? I'm stunned. https://t.co/7oJcyOISEm
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
“He will always have an asterisk next to his name,” Katz continued. “When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.”
The video was first reported by Ryan Lovelace in his book “Search and Destroy: Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh.” The author told the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time that it calls into question everything that Ford and Katz have previously said on the matter.
Lovelace additionally suggested that had this information been known during the Kavanaugh hearings, there might have been different questions and different results. Ford had told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she came forward out of a sense of “civic duty.”
“Ford’s audience was not the Senate, as Katz had previously suggested, but the American people,” Lovelace wrote. “If they could be persuaded that Justice Kavanaugh was a predator, then they might not accept a future ruling by the five Republican-appointed justices altering the right to obtain an abortion established by Roe v. Wade.”
“Had the Senate understood Ford’s real motivation, as described by Katz, it might have appreciated more fully the pressure that ‘organized forces’ were applying,” he added.
Katz’s remarks at the Baltimore conference rang partially true: The notoriety of the Kavanaugh hearings caused Kavanaugh to become a target for protesting. In the days following the leak of the draft opinion indicating that Roe would soon be overturned, protesters repeatedly showed up outside Kavanaugh’s home where they yelled, sang, and chanted, often accusing him of being a rapist.
Shortly before Roe was overturned, authorities arrested a man near the Kavanaugh family home who said that he had traveled from California to kill the justice out of a desire to protect abortions in the United States. That man’s name is Nicholas Roske. Almost two years later, there is still no trail date or plea agreement in his case, as The Washington Free Beacon reported.
The post Newly Appointed 4th Circuit Judge Married to Pro-Abortion Christine Ford Lawyer appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: The head of the Arizona Freedom Caucus condemned the “calculated political decision-making” exhibited by Arizona Republicans who sought to distance themselves from the state’s most massive pro-life victory yet.
Some high-profile Arizona Republicans had decried news on Tuesday that the state’s Supreme Court had upheld an 1864 law protecting almost all unborn babies in the state, except when the mother’s life is at risk.
Senate candidate Kari Lake, former Gov. Doug Ducey, Rep. David Schweikert, and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, were among the Republicans who condemned the news and suggested that pro-abortion legislation was needed to rectify the situation.
But the Arizona Freedom Caucus, led by Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman, came out swinging on Tuesday evening, declaring in a statement that the court “upheld the intent of the legislature, and preserved the rule of law” by “ruling that the pre-Roe law will remain effective.”
“We will not compromise on the core value of cherishing and protecting life,” the statement said. Numerous members of the state’s Freedom Caucus promoted the post on “X” and voiced their support.
? STATEMENT ON ARIZONA SUPREME COURT’S PRO-LIFE RULING ?
— Arizona Freedom Caucus (@AZFreedomCaucus) April 9, 2024
Today, the Supreme Court of Arizona made the correct ruling, upheld the intent of the legislature, and preserved the rule of law today by ruling that the pre-Roe law will remain effective.
Protecting the lives of… pic.twitter.com/SPbr7Bamhe
“This is why I am proud to be a member of the AFC,” said state Rep. Rachel Jones, and state Rep. Austin Smith chimed in, “We will continue to lead the way and be unabashedly in favor of supporting both the mother and the unborn child.”
In a phone interview with The Daily Signal on Wednesday, Hoffman emphasized that life is not an issue Republicans should be willing to compromise on.
“We should be resolute in our convictions and in our principles and in our party platform, to be willing to make the case that we cherish life, and that we are going to do everything we can to protect it,” said the Arizona Freedom Caucus chair.
This respect for life should include caring for mothers and families as well, he said.
“What the Arizona Freedom Caucus saw, is this calculated political decision-making yesterday, with people diving for the bushes and effectively abandoning everything that they claim to believe in for the last decade, two decades, three decades in some cases,” he said.
“We just don’t believe that’s how we should operate in this environment that is truly a battle between good and evil. So our statement was simply based on our convictions, and it certainly did send a warning flare up into the sky for those who were hiding in the bushes that no, we need to stand and unabashedly for protecting life and for our principles,” Hoffman added.
Though Arizona has a law protecting unborn babies after 15 weeks, Arizona’s pro-abortion, Democrat governor Katie Hobbs signed an executive order in 2023 giving the state’s Democrat attorney general the power to enforce abortion laws. That attorney general, Kris Mayes, promised not to enforce any protections for the unborn and to “fight like hell” to protect abortions in the state.
Hoffman described Arizona Democrats as supportive of “ripping children apart, limb by limb, in the womb” and working actively to “normalize abortion” and create a “culture of abortion on demand until the moment of birth.”
“This is deeply embedded in Democrat culture,” he said, speculating that some of the reactions from Arizona Republicans on Tuesday may have been a reaction to the energy of the massive abortion messaging machine that is Democratic leadership.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump weighed in on the Arizona ruling, asked by reporters if the ruling went too far.
“Yeah they did, and that will be straightened out,” he said.
“As you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he added. He also said he thinks Hobbs will “bring it back into reason.”
The former president also made an announcement on Monday that he believes each state should follow “the will of the people” and pass state-specific laws on abortion. He also said he supports “exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said in a video posted Monday morning on Truth Social.
“This 50-year battle over Roe v. Wade took it out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds, and vote of the people at each state,” Trump added. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
The former president encouraged Americans to “follow” their “hearts on this issue” but to remember that “you must also win elections to restore our culture and in fact to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.”
Virginia Allen contributed to this report.
The post Arizona Freedom Caucus Leader Slams Republicans ‘Calculated Political Decision-Making’ Following Abortion Ruling appeared first on The Daily Signal.
A number of Arizona Republicans are rapidly distancing from the state’s controversial Supreme Court ruling protecting almost all unborn babies from abortions.
The state Supreme Court upheld a 1864 law on Tuesday that bans almost all abortions in Arizona, except when the mother’s life is at risk. In a 4-to-2 decision, the court said that the law is “now enforceable,” though it will likely not go until effect for a number of weeks.
Though Arizona has a law protecting unborn babies after 15 weeks, Arizona’s Democrat governor Katie Hobbs signed an executive order in 2023 giving the state’s Democrat attorney general the power to enforce abortion laws. That attorney general, Kris Mayes, promised not to enforce any protections for the unborn and to “fight like hell” to protect abortions in the state.
News of the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision was celebrated by pro-life groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, but it prompted outcry from some Arizona Republicans who had formerly expressed desires to protect as many unborn lives as they could.
Senate candidate Kari Lake, who had previously drawn praise from pro-life groups for her staunch defense of life and exposure of Democratic abortion extremism, announced on Tuesday that she not only believes the old law is “out of step with Arizonians,” but she also wants Hobbs and the state legislature “to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.”
“Ultimately,” she said in a statement wherein she promised to oppose a federal ban on abortion, “Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November.”
Lake, during remarks delivered at the American Leadership Forum in 2022, had previously referred to a “great law” that Arizona had “on the books” as she discussed her hope that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
“If that happens, we will be a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore,” she said at the time.
Her campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
.@KariLake in 2022: “Obviously I think Roe should be overturned…we have a great law on the books right now. If that happens, we will be a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore.” pic.twitter.com/KtoaGBdiOT
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 9, 2024
The state’s former Republican governor, Doug Ducey, issued a similar statement calling on the state lawmakers to “heed the will” of the people.
“I signed the 15-week law as governor because it is thoughtful conservative policy, and an approach to this very sensitive issue that Arizonans can actually agree on,” he said. “The ruling today is not the outcome I would have preferred, and I call on our elected leaders to heed the will of the people and address this issue with a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.”
Republican Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the state, has publicly expressed gratitude to his mother for choosing last minute not to abort him. He similarly voiced his disapproval of the ruling on Tuesday.
“I do not support today’s ruling from the AZ Supreme Court,” he said Tuesday in an “X” post. “This issue should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench. I encourage the state legislature to address this issue immediately.”
The congressman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I do not support today’s ruling from the AZ Supreme Court. This issue should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench. I encourage the state legislature to address this issue immediately.
— Rep. David Schweikert (@RepDavid) April 9, 2024
Republican Arizona Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who has described himself as strongly pro-life and supportive of exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, called the ruling a “disaster for women and providers,” insisting that the state’s 15-week-protections for the unborn “protected the rights of women and new life.”
“It respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy—one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand,” he continued. “As my record shows, I’m a strong supporter of empowering women to make their own healthcare choices and I oppose a national abortion ban.”
Ciscomani similarly did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement celebrating the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Ciscomani had said that he “will always defend life as a member of Congress.”
“As a husband and a father, I believe that life is precious, and as a country, we must protect women and children in every way possible,” he said at the time.
My statement on the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling today. pic.twitter.com/A1Do8AjYlb
— Congressman Juan Ciscomani (@RepCiscomani) April 9, 2024
The slew of statements follow former President Donald Trump’s Monday announcement that each state should follow “the will of the people” and pass state-specific laws on abortion.
“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said in a video posted Monday morning on Truth Social.
Trump’s position on abortion was unclear heading into the election, though the former president appointed three Supreme Court justices who ultimately made it possible to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022 by a majority vote — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
“I want to thank the six justices: Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch,” Trump said. He called them “incredible people, for having the courage to allow this long-term, hard-fought battle to finally end.”
“This 50-year battle over Roe v. Wade took it out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds, and vote of the people at each state,” Trump added. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
Further clarifying his view on abortion, he said he supports “exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
“You must follow your heart on this issue, but remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and in fact to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline,” he added.
Trump also criticized Democrats’ extreme abortion positions in his remarks, saying: “Democrats are the radical ones in this position, because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month. The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth—and that’s exactly what it is, the baby is born, the baby is executed after birth—is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.”
Virginia Allen contributed to this report.
The post Arizona Republicans Back Away From the Unborn Following State Supreme Court Ruling appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A prominent Catholic organization is calling on the Department of Justice to defend Catholic churches from anticipated pro-abortion attacks, pointing to the disparities in the DOJ’s enforcement of a law protecting both abortion clinics and churches.
In a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal, CatholicVote President Brian Burch calls on Attorney General Merrick Garland to detail what steps the DOJ plans to take to “combat the incessant attacks against Catholic churches.”
“How much more violence needs to happen before you will act?” he asks Garland. “Why is the FACE Act being enforced against Holocaust survivors, but not [against] those who attempt to destroy churches or even kill Catholics?”
The letter references President Joe Biden’s administration’s focus on prosecuting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. As recently as April 3, the DOJ announced that a federal judge found four pro-life activists guilty of violating the FACE Act—including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, Eva Edl.
“We have had enough of the Biden administration prosecuting pro-lifers while ignoring attacks against Catholic churches across the country,” Burch told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.
“Attorney General Garland’s silence on these hate crimes is deafening,” he added. “Many more attacks are expected this year if he continues to turn a blind eye. It is well past time for the Biden administration to act.”
CatholicVote points out to the DOJ that a man in Verona, New Jersey, set a Catholic Church on fire on April 4. This was the third time since 2018 that this individual, named Elliot Bennett, 42, had “engaged in violence and vandalism against the church,” Burch said. Bennett had been charged with criminal mischief and a hate crime related to prior incidents.
“The Verona incident was the 21st attack on a Catholic church in 2024, the 247th attack since Catholic churches across the country were put under organized siege by pro-abortion domestic terrorists after the Supreme Court leak [of a pending ruling overturning Roe v. Wade] in May 2022, and the 412th attack since general civil unrest swept the nation in May 2020,” Burch wrote. “We have found evidence of arrests in only about 25% of these cases, and zero federal prosecutions.”
The FACE Act protects churches in the same way that it protects abortion clinics, Burch emphasized.
“And yet under your leadership, the Biden administration has refused to prosecute a single act of violence against a Catholic church despite many other cases of arson and firebombing; pro-abortion protesters blocking church entrances and disrupting Masses; and even physical assaults on priests and parishioners, among many other types of violence,” the CatholicVote leader said.
“These attacks have caused at least $25 million in quantifiable damage to churches and instilled fear into hundreds of Catholic communities,” he added.
Though the DOJ promised CatholicVote in December 2021 that it would conduct a 15-day review to ensure that appropriate resources are being deployed to protect houses of worship, this review apparently has not occurred. And according to Burch, the violence has not only continued, but “increased, unabated.”
“This problem is taking on new urgency this year,” he wrote. “Up to a dozen states will be voting on abortion-related ballot initiatives. We have seen surges of attacks against Catholic churches during voting on abortion ballot initiatives in Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio, which had signs expressing their opposition to abortion.”
CatholicVote argues that Catholic churches and individuals have an absolute right to practice their faith, and that these attacks against churches that stand for the right to life are “textbook examples of voter intimidation and voter suppression.”
He added: “You have sued multiple states which you allege are engaging in voter suppression, comparing their laws to those of the Jim Crow era, yet you have not devoted a single minute of federal time to addressing the intimidation and suppression of Catholic voters, which bears striking similarities to the prejudice and violence against African Americans during the Jim Crow era.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.
Since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon thereafter be overturned, there have been at least 236 attacks on Catholic churches and at least 90 attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers, according to CatholicVote trackers.
Yet the Biden DOJ charged only pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, and has since charged only five individuals with violating the FACE Act for targeting pregnancy centers.
In February, conservative leaders called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 “as soon as possible.”
“In the aftermath of additional pro-life activists being convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside an abortion business, we respectfully urge you to take immediate legislative action to protect peaceful pro-life activists from the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice and an unconstitutional law,” the leaders said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.
“The Biden administration has weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors and activists who want to save lives and change hearts and minds,” Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller told The Daily Signal at the time.
The failure to prosecute attacks on Catholic churches under the FACE Act has drawn particular attention in light of the fact that Biden is the nation’s second Catholic president and is often described by the media as a “devout Catholic”—though the president heads the most pro-abortion administration in U.S. history; promotes transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers, even for children; and celebrates transgender ideology.
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a crime against human life, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law” and “close the sexual act to the gift of life.”
In an Easter weekend interview, the left-leaning archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory, described the president as a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses” which parts of Catholicism to adhere to.
“I would say there are things, especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore,” Gregory said.
“The issues of life begin at the very beginning. And they conclude at natural death,” the cardinal said. “And you can’t pick and choose. You’re either one who respects life in all of its dimensions, or you have to step aside and say, ‘I’m not pro-life.’”
The post EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Must Defend Catholic Churches From More Expected Pro-Abortion Attacks, Leader Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Vatican on Monday issued a declaration, “Dignitas Infinita,” on human dignity, warning that the practice of surrogacy, transgender surgeries, and gender theory are contrary to human dignity.
“In the face of so many violations of human dignity that seriously threaten the future of the human family, the Church encourages the promotion of the dignity of every human person, regardless of their physical, mental, cultural, social, and religious characteristics,” the document says. “The Church does this with hope, confident of the power that flows from the Risen Christ, who has fully revealed the integral dignity of every man and woman.”
The name of the document translates to “Infinite Dignity,” and it’s a five-year-long product of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that reaffirms Catholic Church teaching on the topics. It addresses a number of weighty topics that have entered the political sphere, including surrogacy.
“The Church also takes a stand against the practice of surrogacy, through which the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object,” the document states.
“First and foremost, the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of the child,” it continues. “Indeed, every child possesses an intangible dignity that is clearly expressed—albeit in a unique and differentiated way—at every stage of his or her life: from the moment of conception, at birth, growing up as a boy or girl, and becoming an adult.
“Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver,” the document adds.
It also addresses “critical issues present in gender theory,” warning that “it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
“This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference, but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them,” the Vatican document says. “In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.”
As for attempted sex-change operations, “Dignitas Infinita” emphasizes that the “dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as such.” It quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’”
“Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document states. “This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of health care professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.”
The post Vatican Warns: Surrogacy, Trans Surgeries, Gender Ideology Violate Human Dignity appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Staffers at a pro-life pregnancy resource center in Rochester, New York, are criticizing the FBI for failing to provide any kind of status update of investigations into pro-abortion vandals’ attacks on the pregnancy center.
Nearly two years after the initial June 2022 attack, CompassCare pregnancy medical center says that the FBI has put up billboards offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the criminals who firebombed the pregnancy center.
The billboard is placed about a mile away from the center, CompassCare said in a release. The group added that the billboard appeared shortly before the sentencing of a separate pro-abortion arsonist, Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, who in December pleaded guilty to attacking a pro-life organization in Madison, Wisconsin.
CompassCare says that the FBI won’t communicate with them about the billboard, first noticed by the organization on April 1, and won’t provide a status update on its investigation into the attack.
“Supporters have asked if CompassCare paid for this expensive billboard,” said the Rev. Jim Harden, CompassCare CEO, in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “We did not. The FBI refuses to communicate.”
“The erratic nature of [Department of Justice] and FBI behavior around cases of violence against pro-life groups appears to be PR related, bolstering their reputation when under pressure to produce results by media and congressional judiciary committees,” Harden speculated.
“Perhaps they anticipate more violence against Christian pro-lifers ahead of the next big Supreme Court ruling in June and want to make it look like they care?” he questioned.
The FBI and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.
CompassCare was attacked a second time in March 2023. The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen reported at the time that surveillance footage from the attack showed an individual wearing a hoodie walk up to the front of the pregnancy center, spray paint the word “Liars” over the CompassCare sign, then walk away back down the street.
The radical pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for the June 2022 firebombing of the pro-life center. Pro-abortion activists also spray-painted the words “Jane was here” on the side of the building.
Since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon thereafter be overturned, there have been at least 236 attacks on Catholic churches and at least 90 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, according to Catholic Vote trackers.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) prohibits the intentional destruction or damage of reproductive health care facilities, theoretically protecting not only abortion clinics, but also pro-life churches and pregnancy centers.
But President Joe Biden’s DOJ charged only pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, and has since charged only five individuals with violating the FACE Act by targeting pregnancy centers.
In February, conservative leaders called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to pass the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 “as soon as possible.”
“In the aftermath of additional pro-life activists being convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside an abortion business, we respectfully urge you to take immediate legislative action to protect peaceful pro-life activists from the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice and an unconstitutional law,” the leaders said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.
“The Biden administration has weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors and activists who want to save lives and change hearts and minds,” Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller told The Daily Signal at the time.
Virginia Allen contributed to this report.
The post Pregnancy Center Slams FBI For Failure to Arrest Pro-Abortion Firebombers appeared first on The Daily Signal.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit accusing the state of Utah, and its Department of Corrections, of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in failing to give a man hormones for his gender dysphoria.
The prisoner, who identifies as a transgender woman, is said to have requested to purchase women’s clothing and “personal items in the commissary,” such as women’s underwear and makeup.
He also wanted to be housed with female prisoners, the DOJ said. The Utah Department of Corrections assigns prison accommodations based upon sex at “commitment,” when staffers conduct a visual search of genitals, according to the Justice Department.
The Utah Department of Corrections did not grant those requests, the DOJ said, accusing the Utah agency of causing the man’s gender dysphoria to worsen.
“Twenty-two months after entering custody,” the DOJ said, the trans-identifying prisoner “performed dangerous self-surgery and removed [his] own testicles.”
“People with gender dysphoria, including those held in jails and prisons, are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act and are entitled to equal access to medical care, just like anyone else with a disability,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
“Delays or refusals to provide medical treatment for people with gender dysphoria can cause irreparable harm, including debilitating distress, depression, attempts at self-treatment and even death by suicide,” Clarke added. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to protecting the rights of all people with disabilities in our country, including those who experience gender dysphoria—and those rights are not given up at the jailhouse door.”
The DOJ also accused the Utah Department of Corrections of “imposing unnecessary eligibility criteria for assessment and treatment for gender dysphoria that it does not require for other conditions.” A letter of findings to the Utah agency states that the prison system routes requests for “medical care” for gender dysphoria through its gender dysphoria committee.
If a man in the Utah Department of Corrections self-identifies as a transgender woman, he will have to request an evaluation by the agency’s mental health staff, and these staffers then present their findings to the gender dysphoria committee. The committee will decide whether or not to refer the man to a health care provider for a diagnostic evaluation for gender dysphoria, and if the committee approves the evaluation, the Department of Corrections will refer the individual to its contract psychologist, according to the letter of findings.
“If the committee denies the evaluation, the incarcerated person must wait one year before they are eligible to request diagnostic services again,” the letter said. “After a diagnostic assessment, [the Utah Department of Corrections] medical staff will consider the psychologist’s recommendations and may order treatment with hormones, but not ‘[c]osmetic or elective surgical procedures for the purpose of sex reassignment.’”
The Justice Department claims that the committee included people who were reluctant to prescribe hormones for gender dysphoria, calling that “overt bias against the individuals seeking care.”
When the Department of Corrections finally allowed the prisoner identified in the Justice Department’s lawsuit to start hormonal medication, the DOJ claimed, the prisoner’s Department of Corrections doctor tried to talk him out of taking hormones. The DOJ claims that the doctor then failed to take “basic steps to ensure that it was provided safely and effectively,” such as conducting routine laboratory testing.
The Justice Department is calling on the Utah agency to adopt, revise, and implement new policies that let men who think they are women or women who think they are men to obtain “health care services” for gender dysphoria, and to “reasonably modify UDOC policies, practices, and procedures when necessary to ensure that individuals with gender dysphoria have equal access to all UDOC services, programs, and activities including commissary, pat and visual searches, housing, and required and optional programming.”
The Utah Department of Corrections said in a March 12 statement that it is working to address the “complex” issue and described itself as “blindsided” by the DOJ’s announcement regarding its findings in March.
“We have also taken steps on our own, and as a state, to address the needs of inmates while maintaining the highest safety standards,” Executive Director Brian Redd said in a statement. “We fundamentally disagree with the DOJ on key issues, and are disappointed with their approach.”
The post Biden DOJ Targets Utah Prisons After Trans Prisoner Removes His Own Testicles appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Cross-dressed by his grandmother as a child, abused by his uncle, confused and hurting, Walt Heyer sought to become a woman. As a young man, he underwent attempted gender-reassignment surgery, lived as a trans-identifying woman for eight years, and ultimately detransitioned.
Heyer, now 83, has spent the past few decades offering support to men and women who also have been taught to believe they were born in the wrong body. As part of that effort, he told The Daily Signal, he’s written a number of books and answered “thousands” of letters from individuals, often men, who seek his help.
Now, he’s partnering with Ascend Pictures Productions to produce a movie about his story, tentatively titled “Who Am I.” That movie will pose the question, Heyer says: “Who do we think we are?”
“There’s been nothing like it,” he said in a Tuesday telephone interview. “It is a powerful movie.”
Heyer knows his story has inspired many people, and he believes it should be shared through movie. When he was only 4 years old, he has shared, his grandmother would secretly dress him in a purple chiffon dress.
The attention and affirmation—which made Heyer feel very special as a child—“would be his mustard seed of torment.”
His film’s website shares: “The dress also became a source of his turmoil once his parents found out about his secret. His father’s spankings became more intense and also led to his being sexually abused by his uncle. This manifested into Walt’s affliction—thoughts and feelings that maybe he should have been born a girl. Andrea and then Laura were born in his mind, and they wanted Walt gone.”
Heyer sought transgender treatments that “promised relief,” but those treatments only “led to the destruction of his marriage, his family, and his career.” The movie would explore Heyer’s journey, he said, which includes his ultimate discovery of his Christian faith and the “road back to redemption” and forgiveness.
Heyer emphasized to The Daily Signal that he wants the film to focus on sharing his story, rather than being preachy: “We really want it to appeal to people who don’t know Jesus. And I think it will.”
He wants viewers to understand that the issues he was dealing with, and the issues that other individuals who try to transition are experiencing, go much deeper than gender. And gender therapists are not going to be able to help individuals struggling in this way, Heyer maintains.
But the movie will need financial support to make it happen. Heyer encourages supporters to visit the prospective film’s website, where they can sign up for updates.
“We need support,” he noted. “We need the crowdfunding to get it off the ground. Crowdfunding is the most important part.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: Movie Would Share ‘Gut-Wrenching Story’ of Man Who Tried to Become a Trans Woman appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., said in an interview over the weekend that President Joe Biden is a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses” which parts of Catholicism he will adhere to.
Gregory appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday with the female Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, where he discussed the Catholic president’s open support for issues such as abortion that are in direct contradiction with Catholic Church teaching.
Biden, who describes himself—and has been described by establishment media—as a “devout Catholic,” is open about frequently attending weekly Mass. But the president heads the most pro-abortion administration in United States history; promotes transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers, even for children; and celebrates transgender ideology.
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a crime against human life, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law” and “close the sexual act to the gift of life.”
Although Gregory said that Biden is “very sincere about his faith,” the cardinal added that Biden “picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
“There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’ [in which] you choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging,” Gregory explained.
DC’s @WashArchbishop Wilton Gregory: Joe Biden is a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses” what parts of Catholicism to actually adhere to or ignore (like abortion). pic.twitter.com/i0Cbs226Uf
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 1, 2024
Gregory continued: “I would say there are things, especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore.”
“The issues of life begin at the very beginning. And they conclude at natural death,” the cardinal said. “And you can’t pick and choose. You’re either one who respects life in all of its dimensions, or you have to step aside and say, ‘I’m not pro-life.’”
The Archdiocese of Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. But the cardinal’s remarks drew praise from Catholics on social media, among them The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, who described Gregory’s comments as “marvelous.”
Good to see some faithful moral leadership from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, especially at a time when the seat of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington is vacant. https://t.co/QqHcI7pKWf
— André Béliveau (@TheRealBeliveau) April 1, 2024
Gregory sparked a backlash in November 2020 when he said in an interview with a leftist Jesuit outlet, America Magazine, that he would not deny Communion to Biden at Mass.
“The kind of relationship that I hope we will have is a conversational relationship, where we can discover areas where we can cooperate that reflect the social teachings of the church, knowing full well that there are some areas where we won’t agree,” Gregory told America Magazine at the time.
His stance drew criticism from traditional Catholics, who argued that Biden’s open embrace of unrestricted abortion constituted a grave scandal.
In September 2021, however, the cardinal offered a rare rebuke of Biden’s denial that life begins at conception, telling the president: “The Catholic Church teaches, and has taught, that human life begins at conception, so the president is not demonstrating Catholic teaching.”
He added: “Our church has not changed its position on the immorality of abortion. I don’t see how we could, because we believe that every human life is sacred.”
The White House would not address Gregory’s most recent remarks. Instead, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates mocked The Daily Signal, the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation, saying, “We refer The Heritage Foundation to the Office of Public Engagement. You have reached the press office.”
The post DC Archbishop: Joe Biden Is a ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vaunce News 