George Santos & Marjorie Taylor Greene cosponsor federal book ban bill

The Trump supporters have cosponsored a bill that could be used to ban books by LGBTQ+ authors in schools.

By Alex Bollinger

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. George SantosPhoto: Screenshot

Out Rep. George Santos (R-NY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are cosponsoring a bill that could restrict students’ access to books that discuss LGBTQ+ themes.

Santos is one of 11 out LGBTQ+ members of the House of Representatives and the only one advancing an anti-LGBTQ+ equality agenda. The other 10 LGBTQ+ House members are Democrats.

The bill, H.R. 863, was filed last week by Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who said that it will “end the sexualization of children in schools.”

The full text of the bill has not been uploaded to the Congressional database and Mills hasn’t posted it to his website yet, but its description says its purpose is “to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.”

Schools are not distributing pornography to students and publishers are not selling porn magazines to schools to stock in their libraries. The mention of “sexually explicit material” likely refers to books that discuss LGBTQ+ people. Many on the right refer to any discussion of LGBTQ+ people in the presence of children as the “sexualization of children.”

The bill also dovetails with right-wing fear about “pornography” in schools. Many right-wing activists over the past several years have called any book that discusses sexuality at all “pornography,” including books that discuss non-heterosexual family structures. The language has been used to raise the stakes as conservative parents try to get books by LGBTQ+ authors banned from school districts.

For example, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shared a fake news article that claimed the left wants to be “teaching pornography” to children in schools. When called out, he said, “It could easily have been real.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent a letter in late 2021 to a board saying that “a growing number of parents of Texas students” are “rightfully angry” about kids being “exposed to pornography” in school, just a month after a Texas Republican state lawmaker issued a list of 850 books he demanded school districts investigate. The list included books like And Tango Makes Three, which is about a baby penguin raised by two penguin dads, and Being Jazz, about the life of trans television personality Jazz Jennings.

The extreme rhetoric resulted in the police being called on the Republican Massachusetts secretary of state candidate Rayla Campbell last year. Campbell waved a book by an asexual and non-binary author that she claimed was “child pornography” and said that it should be banned from schools. Since she effectively admitted to being in possession of child pornography, someone called the police. An officer looked through the book and determined that it was not child pornography and she was not arrested.

“The battlefield for the future of our society is being fought within the classrooms of American schools,” Mills said in a statement about H.R. 863. “This bill targets the Left’s efforts to sexualize children in schools across the U.S.”

“From school board meetings to new representation in local, state, and federal levels, Americans are waking up to the grim reality of woke indoctrination guised as a normal education. No more.”

Only seven of Mills’s colleagues have cosponsored the bill so far, including Santos and Greene.

Despite being gay and having a background in drag performance, Santos campaigned on an anti-LGBTQ+ platform. In one media appearance before he was elected, he decried same-sex couples raising children.

“The family unit has been under attack for decades, decades!” Santos said on John Stubbins’s conservative Indivisible show. “In different ways, right? The flavor of the decade is same-sex couples. ‘Oh, that’s so OK!’ Look, to each their own, I don’t have anything against that but they’re teaching in school how kids that, you know, you don’t need a mommy and a daddy, you can have two mommies, you can have two daddies. I think that’s a little much for kids, right?”

“And when we have instability in the family unit, you wreak havoc,” he continued. “One parent can’t parent two kids as well as two parents, and there’s always that feminine touch to boys from the mother and that masculine touch to boys from the father, same thing goes for the daughters, and it creates equilibrium and balance.”

Santos was also a supporter of Donald Trump, who banned transgender people from serving openly in the military, fought for religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws so that religious health care providers and businesses could refuse LGBTQ+ patients and customers, and opposed the Equality Act, which would have banned anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination at the federal level in a number of areas.



Santos and Greene have not released statements about H.R. 863.

Drag bans could result in arrests at Pride parades

If a drag queen (or trans person) lip syncs to a song while riding a float, they would be in violation of the proposed laws.

By Sarah Prager Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Photo: Shutterstock


Laws banning drag performances have been introduced in legislative sessions in at least 14 states this year, and their potential effects are much more far-reaching than entertaining shows.

An alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ (particularly anti-transgender) bills continue to be introduced; the ACLU is tracking 278 of them across 33 states. While many target bathrooms, IDs, books, healthcare, education, and sports, a newer trend this year is attempting to ban drag.

Republican state legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have all introduced various bills on this theme.

Sybastian Smith, Director of Organizing for the National Center for Transgender Equality, says there are about 32 bills that seek to ban drag shows currently in state legislatures.

“Five of these bills have specified that exposure to the LGBTQ+ community is child abuse, most of these bills ban minors and ban drag performers from public spaces,” Smith told LGBTQ Nation. “In fact, about six of these bills have defined drag performers as people who dressed and expressed differently from their ‘biological sex’ or ‘gender identity,’ and we have concerns that this also applies to everyday transgender people.”

Like other anti-transgender bills that seek to ban gender-affirming health care or access to public accommodations, these bills are part of a nationwide effort to legislate trans people out of existence, transgender rights advocates say.

“These bills are framed as an attack against drag performers, but it actually seeks to criminalize the very existence of transgender people by labeling gender expression and gender-affirming clothing as ‘drag,’” Smith says.

Zooey Zephyr, who took office last month as the first and only transgender woman in the Montana House of Representatives, agrees.

“These bills are designed both to ostracize and shun LGBTQ people and trans people specifically from the public and also to embolden the people who harbor anger and hatred towards trans people,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “It is clear based on the similar bills we’re seeing across the country, based on the comments of Republican presidential hopefuls for 2024 that anti-trans rhetoric is becoming a core part of the far right.”

House Bill 359 in Montana would ban minors from attending drag shows, ban drag performances from public libraries and schools, and ban minors from entering any business that provides a drag show (labeling any such business a “sexually oriented business”). A drag performance is defined in the bill as “a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs for entertainment to appeal to a prurient interest.”

Zephyr is concerned that this wording could apply broadly not only to drag performers but to any transgender person in certain situations, such as a transgender parent singing to their child, a transgender actor in a local theater troupe, or even a transgender child dancing. The broad potential interpretations leave many hypotheticals to the imagination, such as if high school productions of Hairspray or As You Like It would ever be allowed again.

The Montana bill targets minors’ access to drag specifically, as do many other states’ bills that classify drag as an adult-only activity.

Drag queen story hours have become a popular way to share children’s books with LGBTQ+ content outside a school setting, where such books have become increasingly banned. After books with life-saving representation have been pulled from library and school shelves, it has been dangerous to even attend drag storytimes to access them. GLAAD reported at least 141 anti-drag protests, attacks, or significant threats in 2022, including drag story hours, brunches, and bingo events. The attacks included multiple incidents of armed Neo-Nazis disrupting or protesting drag events, including those with children present.

Now several states want to criminalize those events altogether, but this isn’t the first time in U.S. history this has happened.

“These attacks are not new,” Smith says. “Historically, we have seen extremists use harmful rhetoric like this for decades.” He points to anti-crossdressing laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that were one element of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution that protestors at the Stonewall Inn fought back against. Police routinely used these laws as excuses to harass and arrest LGBTQ+ people when they had no other charges they could use, such as catching someone in the act of sodomy.

Today, Smith, Zephyr, and others are concerned that anti-drag laws will be used to target transgender people who are not drag performers, just like the laws repealed decades ago.

The most broadly written bills, like Tennessee’s House Bill 9 and North Dakota’s House Bill 1333, ban drag from being performed on any public property, which would mean drag would not be permitted at Pride events. It could also theoretically mean that a transgender person dressing in clothing matching their gender identity but not their sex assigned at birth could be arrested if they did anything constituting a performance, such as lip-syncing to a song they were listening to.

In Tennessee and North Dakota, a first offense carries a penalty of up to nearly one year in prison, a fine of $2,500 to $3,000, or both. A second offense would be a felony and could carry a penalty of up to five to six years in prison and additional fines.

Drag performers, transgender people, loved ones of transgender people, activists, and others have been speaking out in opposition to these bills at hearings across the country. Zephyr urges others to raise their voices against these bills, a task that falls to the grassroots since there are no federal protections.

“These attacks are going to continue to escalate until we as a community—as trans people, as legislators, our friends, families, and neighbors who love and care about us—stand up and say that these policies need to stop, that trans people belong.”

ON THE RIGHT
GOP Primary Voters Want Presidential Candidates to Embrace Culture War Issues, Poll Finds

Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks during a rally in Hialeah, Fla., November 7, 2022. 

(Marco Bello/Reuters)

By ARI BLAFF
National Review

A new poll of Republican primary voters found that the vast majority want the party’s presidential candidates to lean into culture war issues, especially when it comes to education and health care.

The survey, commissioned by the conservative, pro-family American Principles Project, found that 93 percent of the 1,000 Republican primary voters surveyed want presidential candidates to prioritize parental rights and school curriculum transparency.

There was also significant GOP voter enthusiasm for candidates who back federal laws banning permanent sex-changing medical procedures for minors (76 percent), prohibiting biological males from competing in girls’ sports (69 percent), and requiring age-verification measures for pornographic websites to protect kids (86 percent), according to the poll conducted by OnMessage Inc. between January 30 and February 5.

“GOP leaders and candidates should take from this poll one important lesson: voters expect them to fight wokeness,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, said in a prepared statement released with the poll.

“Support for policies protecting families from gender ideology is off the charts, with the majority of the base showing a strong preference for tackling these issues,” he said. “Meanwhile, approval of Republican establishment priorities was much more muted, with most of those surveyed even agreeing that GOP elected officials have given up too much ground in the culture war.”

The poll shows the enthusiasm Republican primary voters have for many culture-war issues. It also found that those voters expressed less interest in more “establishment-preferred issues” like reforming Social Security and Medicare (64 percent), passing a pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants (59 percent), and providing funding and military aid to Ukraine (47 percent).

According to the poll, a majority of voters who consider themselves somewhat or very conservative said they would prefer a presidential candidate who prioritizes combatting the Left’s social agenda, whereas 61 percent of moderates said they would prefer a candidate who prioritizes the more establishment issues.

In the poll, Florida governor Ron DeSantis edged out former president Donald Trump by 15 percentage points (53 percent to 38 percent) in a hypothetical head-to-head Republican showdown. But in a hypothetical field of 14 candidates, Trump led with 34 percent support, while DeSantis was just behind with 33.5 percent.

Trans activist injects testosterone in front of board at hearing to protest trans health care ban

He then shouted, "Trans liberation today, tomorrow, and forever."

By Molly Sprayregen 

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Photo: Screenshot

A trans activist has gone viral for injecting his weekly hormone shot in front of the Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine while testifying against a ban on gender-affirming care for youth.

Twenty-five-year-old Lindsey Spero told the board that for months trans people have “stood before you, put their hearts on full display, and vulnerably pleaded with you to listen to our stories and perspectives.”

“The American Academy of Pediatrics has condemned your actions and our federal government has spoken out against the actions you seek to take regarding the necessary health care for trans youth,” he continued.

“I could stand here and tell you about the times I attempted to end my life because I didn’t have access to gender-affirming care, but I know, I know you don’t care. I see you sneering at us while we come here and talk to you. Instead, I’m going to take the rest of my time to demonstrate the sacred and weekly ritual of my shot in front of you in this body. My medication is lifesaving… Your denial of my need for this medication doesn’t make my existence as a trans person any less real.”

At that, Spero took out their needle and injected the shot into their stomach. A trans flag draped around them like a cape, they pumped their fist into the air and shouted, “Trans liberation today, tomorrow, and forever!” while many members of the crowd cheered and gave them a standing ovation.



Spero told Buzzfeed News he was forced to undergo conversion therapy as a kid and was kicked out of his home at 18 due to his gender identity. He said he decided to do his injection in front of the board after speaking with queer elders and deciding it was time decision-makers actually saw what gender-affirming care looks like.

“It’s crazy how many people have never seen it before,” he said. “The medical board has quite literally heard from everyone — from parents, youth, they’ve summoned medical professionals. It seems like they are past the point of being reasoned with, so I felt like action would be a strong show of resistance.”

In the moment, Spero said he “felt anger and this kind of holy rage that comes from knowing that you have no choice but to fight and that your fight is justified.”

“My hands stopped shaking and my voice became steady. I was able to slow down and look into each of their eyes. I could see the fear in their eyes and I could see in that moment how unsure they were of themselves.”

Despite the overwhelming testimony against banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, the boards voted to do so anyway and included a ban on trans youth participating in studies through state universities.

A Blueprint for Converting Empty San Francisco Offices to Housing Already Exists
Written by Kevin Truong

San Fransisco Standard

A rendering shows architect Mark Hogan’s design to turn existing garages and storage spaces into six apartment buildings at 2775 Market St. in San Francisco’s Castro District. | Courtesy Open Scope Studio

As policymakers mull how to convert empty office buildings into much-needed housing, one architect believes he has the key to making those ambitious projects happen. 

There is a litany of reasons why only one office-to-residential conversion project has been proposed since the pandemic—a slice of office space of historic Warfield Building that would be turned into 34 apartments. Among them are the owners of office buildings holding out hope for a miracle recovery, and the sheer cost.  

Developers are aiming to convert a section of office space in the Warfield building into 34 apartments. | Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

But as office values begin to decline, architect Mark Hogan says he’s found a way to make office-to-residential conversions more feasible: think small. 

Hogan’s firm, OpenScope Studio, found that pre-1950 commercial buildings under nine stories tall—the best candidates for conversion from a design perspective—also have higher vacancy rates and lower prices than the broader market.

The upshot? Low-rise, Class C buildings Downtown could be ripe for conversions that could be done quickly—without subsidies, but with tweaks to codes. Importantly, these buildings are more likely to qualify for historic tax credits to make financing conversions easier. 

“It’s pretty similar to the change of use in office space where you’re converting large storage rooms, mechanical rooms and parking garages into living space and often adding a pretty substantial number of units in the process,” Hogan said. 

OpenScope put together a research document laying out how office-to-residential conversions could be streamlined, using already implemented policies around multifamily accessory dwelling unit (ADU) conversions as a blueprint.

Hogan highlighted a project at 2775 Market St. in the Castro where the firm turned existing garages and storage spaces into six apartment buildings. In another project in Pacifica, the firm was able to turn tuck-under parking into 42 new affordable apartments. Because these projects don’t expand the building’s footprint, there are far fewer requirements in terms of community meetings and notification. 

Architect OpenScope Studio designed a multifamily ADU project that turned garage space into six new units of housing at 

2775 Market St. in the Castro. 

| Courtesy of OpenScope via Hewitt Photography

In San Francisco, building, fire and planning departments collaborated to create building code equivalencies to make these ADU conversions more feasible. Essentially, this means establishing clear guidelines for alternatives to modern standards for entrance, exit, open space and access that can work in older, historic buildings. 

That same process could pave the way for office-to-residential conversions. 

At the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, Board President Aaron Peskin introduced a resolution that charges the Planning Department with collecting a list of prime candidates for conversion and identifying financial and policy barriers to doing so. 

“There is no silver bullet, but maybe some silver buckshot. This is one of those pieces of buckshot for addressing Downtown,” Peskin said at the meeting. A report from city officials is expected to be delivered next month.

Hogan suggested equivalences like categorizing fire escapes as a second means of exit or allowing use of existing elevators, rather than installing much larger elevators required under current building code. Open space requirements would also likely need to be modified to help projects pencil.

The building and planning code changes mirror some of those in the Los Angeles Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which is credited for building some 14,000 units in the city’s historic downtown core. A key part of that law was loosened building requirements around seismic retrofitting.

While San Francisco’s planning code currently provides a number of potential exemptions for Downtown conversions, including around open space requirements, parking and loading space, none of these are guaranteed. Hogan said he’d like to see a list of exemptions that are codified in the case of conversions. 

“The certainty in something like LA’s ordinance provided is really important,” Hogan said. “When someone is going into a project like this, they don’t want a big question mark hanging over whether the Planning Commission will make a favorable decision.”

There are still open questions, particularly around affordability requirements. 

For multifamily ADU conversions in San Francisco, building owners sign a waiver of their Costa-Hawkins rights that ensures the units are rent controlled; however, no such provision would exist in the case of office-to-residential conversions. 

Hogan said the projects would be subject to the city’s inclusionary housing requirements, although these policies are being reassessed in line with the mayor’s new housing directive.   

That housing directive, which was put in place to help San Francisco’s unprecedented goal of building 82,000 units over the next eight years, also aims to speed up the long process of building and permitting, a perennial complaint among developers.  

“One important piece that San Francisco has not effectively dealt with at all is how do we make the nuts and bolts of the permitting process go faster,” Hogan said. “Everyone’s so fixated on zoning, but I would say that a lot of the dysfunction in just getting permits issued is a bigger problem because it really discourages people from doing projects here.”

Loggerhead sea turtle released after rehabbing in Florida

FL turtle was found Dec. 29 with a tear in the lung caused by a boat

A loggerhead sea turtle named Rocky paused briefly on the sand Wednesday morning before slowly crawling into the Atlantic Ocean after spending six weeks rehabbing at Florida's Loggerhead Marinelife Center.

Turtle hospital staff and volunteers cheered as the turtle made its way down the beach, which is directly across the street from the center. Rocky was equipped with a blue tracking device on its back, which allows the staff to continue monitoring the large turtle.

Rocky, a 220-pound female turtle, was found floating off North Hutchinson Island on Dec. 29 with a tear in the lung caused by a boat strike, Andy Dehart, the center's president and CEO, said Wednesday.

The turtle "had a perforation in the lung, so was trapping air in the body cavity, which was making it essentially be what’s called a floater," Dehart said. "It couldn’t dive. It couldn’t get underwater."

SOUTH FLORIDA RESEARCHERS USE GPS-FITTED POSSUMS AND RACCOONS TO CAPTURE INVASIVE PYTHONS: REPORTS

A loggerhead sea turtle named Rocky was released into the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 15, 2023 in Juno Beach, Fla after spending six weeks rehabbing at Loggerhead Marinelife Center. (AP Photo/Cody Jackson)

The center's goal is to rehab the turtles and get them back into their natural habitat.

"So, every one of these animals that goes back is critical to the survival of the sea turtle populations, especially a large breeding female like Rocky," he said. "Seeing that return to nature is truly something magical."

Juno Beach is north of West Palm Beach on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

Last year, the center monitored some 18,000 turtle nests along a 10-mile stretch of beach. Most of the nests were comprised of leatherback turtles, which are the most endangered, along with loggerhead and green sea turtles. Nesting season runs from March 1 to the end of October.

CBO warns of sharp uptick in Social Security, Medicare spending

CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET TO PAY FOR IT

BY MIKE LILLIS 



Federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is projected to rise dramatically over the next decade, far outpacing revenues and the economy on the whole while putting new pressure on Congress to address accelerated threats of insolvency, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The increase is driven by a variety of factors, including Social Security’s new cost-of-living adjustment, the rising cost of medical services under Medicare and greater participation rates in both programs, as the last of the baby boomers become eligible for retirement benefits.


The result, the CBO estimates, is that combined spending on Social Security and Medicare will almost double by 2033, when required funding for the two programs will approach $4 trillion, representing more than 10 percent of the country’s total economic output.

Another consequence, said CBO Director Phillip Swagel, is that Social Security now faces a funding shortfall in 2032 — two years sooner than the previous projection.

The numbers are sure to animate the already contentious debate over federal spending, the national debt and the future of the popular entitlement programs, which have taken a center stage in the early months of this year as President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) begin high-stakes negotiations over raising the nation’s debt limit.

McCarthy, while demanding spending cuts as a part of those talks, has said reductions to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table.” And Biden — making similar vows to protect the popular senior benefits — appears ready to hold the Speaker to his word.

Yet Medicare is projected to experience a funding shortfall in 2028, and Social Security is forecast to follow in 2032, according to Swagel. And lawmakers in both parties — liberals and conservatives alike — are warning that the longer Congress waits to address those projected deficiencies, the tougher the remedy will become.

“Every year it gets more expensive and harder to do,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a strong Social Security advocate, said Tuesday, before the CBO’s new report was issued.

Yet if the parties agree that Congress must intervene to shore up entitlement finances, they’re at sharp odds over how to go about doing it.

Democrats such as Biden and Larson have floated a series of tax hikes on the wealthiest taxpayers to cover the shortfalls, including a proposal to apply the Social Security tax — which is currently capped at earnings up to $160,200 — to much higher incomes.

Republicans, by contrast, are opposed to any tax hikes, proposing instead to adopt changes such as raising the eligibility age for receiving benefits under Social Security and Medicare while scaling back benefits for wealthier seniors.


The CBO has added some urgency to the debate. Not only has Social Security’s solvency timeline been accelerated, but the new report warns that heightened spending on Social Security, Medicare and other mandatory programs over the next decade — combined with rising interest payments on the federal debt — will put a greater squeeze on the discretionary programs that occupy the remainder of the budget.

Social Security spending will almost double, from $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2022 to almost $2.4 trillion in 2033, the CBO estimated. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), it will grow from 4.8 percent to 6 percent over that span. The jump begins immediately, with a $123 billion increase in fiscal 2023, a 10 percent spike, largely due to the large, 8.7 percent cost-of-living increase for Social Security beneficiaries that took effect last month.

Medicare spending will more than double over the same span, from $710 billion in the last fiscal year to more than $1.6 trillion in 2033, when it will represent 4.1 percent of GDP, the CBO reported.
United Airlines overhauls family seating fees after Biden criticismNearly 30 percent of work remains remote as workers dig in

Spending on other mandatory health care programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and ObamaCare subsidies, will also rise significantly, from $695 billion in 2022 to $1 trillion in 2033, the CBO said.

All told, the CBO found, the federal debt — currently capped at $31.4 trillion — is on pace to balloon to roughly $50 trillion a decade from now, as annual deficits are projected to rise from $1.4 trillion this fiscal year to $2.9 trillion in 2033. And budget watchdogs wasted no time on Wednesday pressing Congress to bring those numbers down, with some calling for immediate reforms to Social Security and Medicare as part of this year’s coming budget debates.

“Today’s CBO report should provide an important dose of reality for politicians making promises they can’t afford to keep,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement.

Nearly 60,000 Wisconsin Seniors on Medicare Need Insulin. So Why Did Republicans Oppose Biden’s $35-a-Month Insulin Cap?

Written By DAVID HOVDE

An Appleton man who attended President Biden’s address says the ‘state of the union’ depends on the state of working Americans.

Last week, as I sat in the US Capitol and listened to President Joe Biden deliver the State of the Union address, it became clear to me that an essential consideration for the president’s assessment of the state of our country depends on the economic security of working families and seniors like me.

While families and seniors across our country do not have all the tools we need just yet, I feel relieved that because of the work and leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration and Democrats like Senator Tammy Baldwin, we are closer to having what we need to provide for ourselves and our families.

This is due in large part to the Inflation Reduction Act, a historic bill that will deliver tangible, economic relief on prescription drugs, health care, and energy costs. Notably, some of the bill’s provisions have already gone into effect as of January 1, including a $35 cap on insulin costs for Medicare beneficiaries like me.

This is huge. Like so many other folks across the state and country, I rely on insulin to keep me alive and healthy. And for the past 15 years during which I have needed this medication, I’ve also noted with dismay the growing number of those dependent on insulin who have to worry about affording other essential expenses while still maintaining their quality of life.

Though I knew I would feel added financial security enrolling in Medicare, I did not realize the impacts would be this significant. Prior to enrolling in Medicare, I was fortunate to have access to a fairly comprehensive and stable insurance plan through my employer. After I retired, I was still able to access health insurance through that employer, though I started paying a significantly higher share of the monthly premium during those years.

Despite having good coverage, I was still paying hundreds of dollars each month for my insulin medications, and for individuals without healthcare insurance or prescription drug coverage, the situation is much more dire. Insulin costs less than $10 per vial to produce, yet with drug companies rapidly raising the price of this life-saving drug, many have had to make difficult decisions about whether and how to pay for medication and for their other essential expenses. To alleviate economic strains, many people who rely on insulin will “stretch” their medications, for example, trying to make three months’ worth of medication work for four months. And though this may lessen financial pressures in the short-term, a lack of a steady, adequate supply of insulin often leads to the development or worsening of a number of other serious health issues. Ultimately, of course, this adds further economic pressures and, more importantly, has negative impacts on an individual’s health.

The $35 insulin copay cap will have a great impact on Wisconsinites. In 2020, roughly 59,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Wisconsin used insulin. That’s 59,000 people who are beginning to have more equitable access to the life saving and quality-of-life care they need and deserve.

The insulin copay cap is not the only thing already implemented as of last month. Drug manufacturers will also need to pay rebates to Medicare if their price increases for certain drugs exceed inflation. Additionally, all recommended vaccines for adults, such as shingles, will be free to seniors. In 2020, an estimated 106,000 Wisconsin Medicare beneficiaries received a Part D vaccine, and this number is likely to rise as the vaccines become more accessible.

None of these provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act should have been controversial; it’s a historic bill that will make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress did not see it that way. Not a single Republican from Wisconsin voted to support this new law.

Access to the care and prescriptions we need to stay alive and healthy is not a privilege, it is a right, contributing directly to our overall quality of life. Based on what I heard last week, the Biden Administration and leaders like Senator Baldwin clearly recognize this fact and are committed to continuing the work on behalf of working families and seniors.

David Hovde Appleton resident David Hovde was Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s guest at this year’s State of the Union address by President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C.

Nikki Haley's South Asian heritage is historic part of her presidential campaign

The Indian community -- just 1% of America -- helped shape two political stars.

ByZohreen Shah
February 15, 2023, 

Nikki Haley kicks off presidential run
The former Trump administration official formally announced her bid at an event in Charleston, South Carolina.

With her announcement this week that she is running for president, Nikki Haley has made a bit of history again -- becoming the first prominent woman of color to seek the Republican nomination.

With Vice President Kamala Harris presumed to be President Joe Biden's running mate if he announces a second run, as he has said he will, it's possible that both major political parties in America could simultaneously have a woman on their ticket for the first time. And both would be South Asian, specifically of Indian descent -- which observers called a massive feat considering the community makes up only about 1% of the country's population and produced two recent political stars.

"This is absolutely a moment," Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College and co-author of the Indian American Election Survey, told ABC News. "We see South Asians who have largely been on the outskirts of American politics in many ways. This is a moment where we're seeing South Asians step into the limelight."

That representation began at the national level more than half a century ago, when Dalip Singh Saund led a push to change immigration laws so he and other Indians could become citizens. He then became the first Asian American, first South Asian and first Sikh in Congress, in 1956.

There are now five South Asians in Congress, often referred to as "the Samosa Caucus."

"Since 2016, we've quintupled our representation in Congress and gone from 12 to 43 in state legislatures. Over that same period of time, our population has not multiplied the same way," said Neil Makhija, the executive director of the Indian American Impact, an organization that helps South Asians run for elected office. "Once people start running, it shows that it's possible."

MORE: Trump allies see Nikki Haley's 2024 campaign as encouraging sign of fractured primary field

When it comes to world leaders, University of California, Riverside, public policy professor Karthick Ramakrishnan points to Rishi Sunak, whose parents are of Indian descent, as someone who represents how fast a community can advance -- considering the British ruled India until 1947. "One generation," Ramakrishnan said, "Someone who is the child of the empire is now the prime minister of Britain."

Nearly one-fourth of the world's population lives in South Asia and many of the countries within it -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka -- have all already had women prime ministers or presidents.

"[Women leading countries] is not something that's necessarily out of the norm of the cultures from which a lot of these people are coming from," said Maneesh Arora, an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley along with her husband Michael Haley at the Golden Temple, Nov. 15, 2014, in Amritsar, India.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Harris' maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, worked to fight for the country's independence from Britain and she's spoken about her parents taking her in a stroller to political protests in the '60s. Haley wrote in her autobiography that her mom, Raj Randhawa, studied law and was offered the first female judgeship in India, although Haley said her own family blocked it because she was a woman.


"They grew up in households where public service was not looked down upon. ... Plenty of Indian Americans grew up in households where it was about becoming a doctor or engineer," Ramakrishnan said.

Harris, who ran for president in 2020 before being selected as Biden's vice president, and now Haley are testing what it means to pursue success at the highest levels of American politics.

Haley is not the first woman of color to seek the GOP nod: Angel Joy Chavis Rocker, a Black school counselor in Florida, ran in the 2000 campaign. But Haley is the most notable non-white conservative woman to ever enter the race.

Her campaign did not comment for this story.
What Haley has said about her heritage

Haley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa to Punjabi Sikh parents who emigrated from India in the 1960s. She has said that early on she adopted her middle name, which means "little one" in Punjabi, as her first name and later took on her husband's last name as her own.

Haley was raised Sikh and has publicly talked about converting to Christianity, once saying the language barrier was what ultimately led to her decision to convert. "At some point, you have to understand the words …. Christianity spoke to me," she previously said while adding, "It wasn't political." She explained to The New York Times in 2012: "We always said 'no' when my mom was trying to teach us Punjabi. Now I wish we had learned, but that is why I think I made the transition."

She joined a Methodist church with her husband but has said she continues visiting the Sikh temple with family.

But for some South Asians, the conversation about Haley rarely gets past her name or religion.

"Her example would reflect the kind of assimilationism that most Indian Americans -- most South Asians -- actually don't do. They don't change their name and they don't convert their religion," Ramakrishnan said.

Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley poses with her husband Michael Haley and traditional Punjabi dancers as she arrives to attend a function at Lovely Professional University LPU in Jalandhar, Nov. 14, 2014.
Shammi Mehra/AFP via Getty Images

In 2001, Haley also listed her race as "white" on her voter registration card, according to The Post and Courier. At the time, a spokesman for her declined to comment and state Republicans suggested the issue was a stunt because it had been uncovered by Democrats, who criticized her as disingenuous.

 FORMER LOUISIANA GOV. BOBBY JINDAL 

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Dr. Hajar Yazhida, a University of Southern California assistant professor in sociology and faculty affiliate at their equity research institution, told ABC News that being able to have racial ambiguity has had a massive impact for both the vice president and Haley -- especially on Haley's journey. (Harris' father is Black, from Jamaica; her mother was born in Chennai, India.)

"We might look at Kamala Harris on one side and Nikki Haley on the other and wonder how it is that two South Asian women ended up as political front-runners? But we have to remember that neither of the candidates are socially read as South Asian women," Yazhida argued.

But Ramakrishnan said even being able to "claim" an identity is something unique to living in the United States -- and something that most politicians do in some way: "We all have different aspects of our identity that we activate. ... Given the context, people code-switch all the time."

Haley has seen prejudice -- even from fellow politicians.

During a runoff election for a state legislative seat in South Carolina, an opponent published ads referring to her as "Nimrata N. Randhawa" and sent out mailers with her standing with her dad in his turban.

When she was running for governor in 2010, a South Carolina state senator referred to her and then-President Barack Obama with a racial epithet.

Haley has touched on some of the struggles her family faced. "I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a black and white world," she said at the 2020 Republican National Convention. "We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave into grievance and hate."

The NAACP also pointed to then-Gov. Haley's heritage in 2011 when criticizing South Carolina for flying the Confederate flag at the Statehouse for nearly half a century. In 2015, in the wake of the fatal shooting of nine Black people at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Haley urged the flag to be removed and state Republicans quickly agreed.

Former South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nov. 19, 2022.
Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images

Haley's politics differ from most in the community

Pomona College professor Sadhwani said South Asians really want to support other South Asians, regardless of party. But the data she has collected on Haley appears to be an exception. "Haley's unfavorable score is 55% in our sample," Sadhwani said. This could be in part because many South Asian people identify as Democrats, data shows

Former President Donald Trump wasn't able to capture the South Asian vote either -- but he tried. In 2019, he held a "Howdy Modi!" rally with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that attracted thousands and filmed an ad where he attempted to speak in Hindi.

That got him ahead with the group -- but not by enough. "Trump made inroads among Indian American voters between 2016 and 2020. He still lost the Indian American vote," said professor Ramakrishnan.

Biden and Harris have focused on South Asians and the Indian community as well, with Biden releasing an agenda for the Indian American community prior to the 2020 election and both him and the vice president including cultural celebrations as part of administration events.

Numbers illustrate how Asian American voters, and Indian voters, can be influential. According to AAPI Data, an organization that publishes demographic data and research, in 2018 there were an estimated 161,000 eligible Indian voters in Texas, 87,000 in Florida, 61,000 in Pennsylvania, 57,000 in Georgia and 45,000 in Michigan.

Major contests in those states, including the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections, have all recently been decided by smaller margins.

And the community is fast growing. In the last two decades, for example, the Indian population in the U.S. has doubled to about 4.6 million in 2019, according to the Pew Research Center.

Roughly 70% of Indian voters in America leaned Democratic as of 2022, according to AAPI Data. That's more than Latinos but less than African Americans. Some of the reasons include religion, extensive training in science and living in a post-9/11 world.

In one of his most notable -- and controversial -- promises as a presidential candidate, Trump said he would block Muslims from entering the U.S. At the time, Haley appeared to distance herself from such a policy. Delivering the Republicans' official 2016 State of the Union response, she said that America should resist following the "angriest voices" and welcome "properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion."

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley makes Indian bread in the kitchen of the Sis Ganj Gurudwara, a Sikh temple, in New Delhi, June 28, 2018.
Prakash Singh/AFP via Getty Images

According to AAPI Data, more than three-fourths of Indians and the majority of Asian voters overall voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, a finding that echoes other exit polling. Haley went on to join Trump's administration, leaving some in her own community wondering how strongly she felt about what she had said just 12 months before.

Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of political science at Drew University and the author of "Desi's Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans," said the vast majority of the South Asian community feels strongly about issues like abortion rights, restricting guns and critical race theory.

"In politics it's hard to predict how the community will react. But it's clear it doesn't align with how she thinks," Mishra said.

'An opportunity for Haley'

But can Haley align South Asian donors?

Indian Americans have the highest levels of income in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, a feat that's often connected to the 1960s when the U.S. specifically engineered a demographic of highly professional immigrants. (Harris and Haley have something else in common that researchers said is powerful -- they are byproducts of this era, with both of their parents coming to America around this time.)

An analysis done by The Los Angeles Times a few months into the 2020 Democratic primary race found that despite Indian Americans being a small demographic, they had donated more than $3 million to presidential campaigns -- more than people in Hollywood.

Mishra told ABC News he created a list of major bundlers during the Obama administration and the number of South Asian names was a fairly big list compared to the population. "They were overwhelmingly going for the Democratic Party," he said.

"What has not been noticed is this growth of a segment of Indian Americans who are affluent, and that goes back to the character of the community," Mishra said.

Data from FiveThirtyEight details just the donations that South Asians made to other South Asian candidates running for House or Senate seats from 2000-2020. The numbers, especially for Democratic candidates, have exploded.

Haley's former spokesperson Rob Godfrey said he remembered her being embraced by such donors while running in South Carolina. "Members of the South Asian community, members of the Indian community, have always been traditionally Democratic," he acknowledged. "But when Nikki ran for governor, there was no shortage of support for her from the South Asian and Indian communities because they had a lot of great pride in her candidacy ... she very much enjoyed the support of them within the state and they were very generous contributors to her campaign, from New Jersey to Chicago to California to Texas."

Sadwani said that when it comes to South Asians though, her research showed that the numbers won't be enough to tip the scale.

Haley's announcement video, on Tuesday, highlighted her heritage and her optimistic vision of a society unencumbered by racial division.

"I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants," Haley said in her video, adding: "My mom would always say, 'Your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities.'"

Sadwani said that message isn't for the South Asian community -- it's for everyone else.

"We're talking more conservative-leaning Latinos, other Asian Americans and even plenty of of non-immigrant voters who are completely opposed to the age old story of the United States being a place that welcomes immigrants and might be disenchanted by the overt racial commentary, the negative stereotypes of a Trump administration, even while supporting many of the Trump-based policies," Sadwani said. "I think this becomes an opportunity for Haley."