What is gender-affirming health care? 'Trans refuge' bill would help kids get it

Nicole Ki and Sam Stroozas
March 2, 2023 

From left to right: Hannah Edwards, Hildie Edwards, Dahlia Edwards and Dave Edwards. Hildie was Grand Marshall at a local pride parade.
Courtesy of the Edwards family

Minnesota’s Legislature is considering a bill that would make the state a safe haven for transgender youth seeking health care. That means trans youth traveling from other states would be protected in seeking gender-affirming health care in Minnesota.

Parents Hao and Gretchen Nguyen, who have a 6-year-old trans daughter and spoke in support of the bill at a hearing last month, say it’s a big deal for trans youth in Minnesota and across the country.

“It should be as simple as it is for Hao and I to take Asher to the doctor for every parent,” said Gretchen Nguyen. “It shouldn’t matter where they are. I also see this as helping to affirm those that are here and making sure that they’re secure in the fact that their representatives have their back.”

But what exactly is the bill seeking to protect? We asked parents, a doctor and the state’s first openly trans legislator what gender-affirming care means. Here are some of the questions they answered.

What is gender-affirming care?

Gender-affirming health care is specialized health care that meets the needs of transgender and gender-diverse youth and their families, according to Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd, chief education officer and medical director of Children’s Minnesota’s gender health program.

That often includes annual pediatric visits where a doctor will check in with a child on what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling, track their mental and physical development and offer support to families navigating school, sports, community activities and social settings.

“It’s knowing for a kid in a family that they can go to a place where everyone there has experience working with kids and families who are transgender and gender-diverse, and knows how to support their family in terms of the questions they’re having, conflict within their family and knows how to support their kids in their school system,” said Goepferd.

In the first visit, Goepferd typically fields questions from kids and parents wondering what to do. The questions are often “What’s next, whether that’s a younger child and the parents are wondering, should we talk about this? Should we not talk about it? How should we talk about it?”

Or, if the child is asking to be called a different name, “Should we change it at school? Should we not change it?”

Much of the national discourse around health care for trans kids and teens has focused on medication and surgery, but Goepferd, who has worked with LGBTQ youth for 16 years, emphasized medications are not a part of gender-affirming care at Children’s Minnesota until kids reach puberty, typically between 12 and 16.

“Once adolescents reach puberty, or the second stage of puberty, they may become eligible for reversible treatments to pause their puberty while they either wait for the emotional and physical developmental maturity to participate in the decision around hormones, or just give them some more time to explore with their therapist and family what the best outcome might be for them going forward,” Goepferd said.

Goepferd added that Children’s Minnesota does not perform surgical procedures on anyone under 18 as part of gender-affirming care, and said in general “it is rare that anyone under the age of 18 accesses surgical procedures as a part of their gender-affirming care.”

Who does it impact?

Gender-affirming care impacts gender-diverse and transgender youth, who start to understand their gender identities at the age of 3 and 4, said Goepferd. Children’s Minnesota’s gender health program sees patients ranging from 4 to 20 years old.

In a 2022 survey of Minnesota students, the Minnesota Department of Health confirmed with MPR about 10 percent of students in eighth grade or higher identified as non-cisgender, which includes transgender, genderfluid, nonbinary and two-spirit identities.

“That’s not an insignificant number,” said Goepferd. “We in our program are probably somewhere around 150 new patients every year, and we’ve been open for almost four years now. So that’s a significant number of close to 600 patients that we’ve seen so far.”

The number of kids and teens traveling out of their states to seek gender-affirming care in more welcoming states like Minnesota are rising, said Goepferd. With the introduction of anti-transgender legislation across the country, Children’s Minnesota has seen an increase in calls from families and providers over the last two years with questions about getting gender-affirming care, or asking if they can transfer patients over to their gender health program.

The calls came from neighboring states like Montana and South Dakota, all over the Midwest and as far as southern states like Florida and Texas, said Goepferd. Some families have relocated to Minnesota seeking a safer environment for their trans kids and to be closer to gender-affirming care.

From left, Hao Nguyen, Ronin Nguyen, Gretchen Nguyen and Asher Nguyen pose for a photo.
Courtesy of Gretchen Nguyen

What does gender-affirming care look like?

Parents say gender-affirming care is similar to routine pediatric visits most kids go to, with some added questions on gender identity.

“It's similar to other pediatric care in that the doctors are answering questions that aren't necessarily like, ‘Is my child's arm broken or not?,” said Gretchen Nguyen.

Many families have to leave their primary pediatrician to seek expertise in gender-affirming care, like the Nguyens.

“The pediatrician kind of had nothing for me,” said Gretchen. “She was just like, ‘sometimes that happens and kids grow out of it.’”

For the Nguyens’ 6-year-old trans daughter, Asher, the gender health clinic at Children’s Minnesota is a safe place. Asher’s correct pronouns are used and the Nguyens can ask about Asher’s development, when it’s appropriate to talk about puberty blockers and resources they can use to affirm her gender identity and inform Asher’s future decisions once she gets older.

“There’s really no anxiety for her when she gets there,” said Hao. “Fast forward five years from now, it’s nice for her to have the same doctor who understands this very specific issue. So when we talk about gender-affirming care, I think creating these safe spaces to inform and educate decisions later that the child’s really comfortable with is part of that.”

Others, like Hannah Edwards and her 12-year-old daughter, Hildie, are at the stage to start exploring medication options, such as hormone blockers.

Since age 8, Edwards’ daughter Hildie has seen a pediatrician specializing in gender-affirming care. After several visits and conversations with her counselor, doctor and family, Hildie decided to start hormone blockers.

“The peace of mind that I saw it give Hildie was incredible,” said Edwards. “She went from obsessively thinking and worrying about the changes that were starting to happen to her body to just kind of getting to be a kid for a while longer. That was a huge blessing.”

Hildie Edwards poses at a Pride parade.
Courtesy of the Edwards family

Why do advocates say it’s important for trans kids to have access to gender-affirming health care?

Goepferd, who has seen a rise in the demand for gender-affirming care across the nation, said the trans refuge bill is about saving young people’s lives.

“We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis in this country,” said Goepferd. “Our children, particularly our teenagers, have higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicidality than it ever had, before the American Academy of Pediatrics declared mental health as a crisis for kids.”

According to the 2022 Minnesota Student Survey, of the 10 percent of students surveyed that identified as non-cisgender, 65 percent reported having long-term mental health, behavioral or emotional problems.

Because kids with transgender and gender-diverse identities often experience stigma and discrimination, Goepferd said they will have higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidality.

“What the research tells us is that when those kids have access to gender-affirming care, to supportive adults, to resources, they do better,” said Goepferd. “They have a more positive sense of self and have less anxiety, depression and suicidality symptoms.”

Medical societies, like the American Medical Association and Children’s Hospital Association, support gender-affirming care because research shows access to this care improves the health and overall well-being of trans youth.

A video of Hao Nguyen speaking in support of his daughter at a hearing for the bill went viral on TikTok and garnered thousands of comments. The comments gave him insight into the impact the bill could have.

“I read all of them,” said Hao. “They’re grown Ashers who are now in their lives, sitting at their homes, in their beds or in their jobs, listening to this testimony. Their comments are stuff like ‘I wish I had a safe place like this. I wish I had a safe place in that family like this. I wish I had a safe state that’s going to do something like this. I wish I wasn’t so afraid to be in the state that I’m in.’”



What is the trans refuge bill?

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who is the sponsor of the trans refuge bill (HF146), said that in simple terms, the bill would protect folks seeking gender-affirming health care. While gender-affirming health care has not been banned in Minnesota, it has been banned in neighboring states, such as South Dakota where Gov. Kristi Noem signed a bill in February banning both surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatments for minors in the state.

Finke said the need will only increase as other states continue to ban care. She said Minnesota would be the fourth state to become a trans refuge state.

“The law would make it so that people who live in states who have banned or restricted gender-affirming care can come to Minnesota to access that care and be protected from the laws that govern their home states,” Finke said.

Finke said many of the stories she has heard discuss the impact of care on trans youth and the danger that they may face when the care is unprotected and can be removed at any point.

“Even if your state is trying to ban health care, you’re at risk by simply existing in that state. That’s what I am hearing people say: I’m not going to wait — we need to go somewhere that is safe for my child right now.”

In line with anti-trans arguments nationwide, several Minnesota legislators and organizations have questioned the impact of minors using hormone blockers or cross-sex hormones, even though the bill itself does not attempt to legislate that.

In the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee meeting on Feb. 21, Rep. Matt Grossell, R-Clearbrook, asked about partially irreversible physical changes that can happen while receiving gender-affirming care, such as facial hair growth for trans men and breast development for trans women.

“Some of these youth may be left with some partially irreversible things that they would be scarred with for life,” Grossell said.

Goepferd was present at the hearing and said that bodily changes associated with gender affirming care happen “very slowly, over time” and that a child would be “well over 18 before they were experiencing significant changes that could be considered permanent.”

“When we force transgender children to go through a puberty that does not align with their identity, they experience significant mental health distress, and that is what we are trying to prevent,” Goepferd said.

Another line of criticism focused on the bill language, which modifies existing law about court jurisdiction involving children. The bill would make seeking gender-affirming care a factor in some assessments for whether a Minnesota court has jurisdiction to make an initial determination in child-custody cases. It also would give courts temporary emergency jurisdiction if a child is here because they have been unable to get gender-affirming health care somewhere else.

“Simply put, the custody provisions of the bill are allowing temporary jurisdiction in the state of Minnesota for custody cases to be heard. It doesn’t change anything about how a custody case would be heard in the state of Minnesota,” Finke said.

Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, said in the committee meeting that she sees the bill as “an assault on parental rights,” saying she has concerns on “the whole custody piece” of the bill. Scott brought up an example of parents living in different states, one in favor of gender affirming care and one against.

“I feel like it gives one parent an advantage over the other in cases where there is some shared parenting going on,” Scott said.

“The idea that there are custody cases where both parents can't have their opportunity to be heard sounds like a very serious problem in a custodial court system,” Finke said, “but I don't think that has anything to do with gender-affirming care.”
Hildie Edwards, a 12-year-old transgender girl, testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for the trans refuge bill on Feb. 10.
Screenshot via video

“Emergency jurisdiction is necessary in this bill because what we are doing, what we are saying is that parents have a right to receive gender-affirming care if they live in South Dakota. And if South Dakota is not going to allow those parents to provide for the best care for their child, then Minnesota can do that, and if that's going to lead to custodial decisions, then we need to be able to have temporary emergency custody in the state of Minnesota for those parents to have their ability to provide for their children,” Finke said.

The bill also says people would not be arrested in or extradited from Minnesota for giving or receiving gender-affirming health care, even if it is considered a crime in another state.

Scott asked for the bill to be sent back to the Committee on Health and Finance but the motion failed.

A companion version of the bill, SF 63, was heard in the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee Feb. 10, and laid over for final action at a later committee meeting and could become part of a larger bill.

Related reading

EarlierNorth Dakota moves to curb trans identity in data, minors

NPRFlorida is one of a wave of states to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth

JanuaryMN bill aims to create legal refuge for trans youth seeking gender-affirming care

2022Minneapolis issues order to protect those seeking gender-affirming health care

Medication abortion could get harder to obtain – or easier: There's a new wave of post-Dobbs lawsuits on abortion pills


Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia

 and Sonia Suter, Professor of Law, George Washington University
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Legal battles are being waged over mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion.

  Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States.

Typically, patients take a two different pills: first mifepristone, then misoprostol.

Even though this option has been legally available for more than two decades, two recent events have raised legal questions about it. First, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling overturned the constitutional right to abortion recognized in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. Second, in January 2023, the Food and Drug Administration decided that certified U.S. pharmacies could sell mifepristone by prescription.

The result is a raft of new legal battles over access to medication abortion.

Some congressional lawmakers seek to protect the right to access the pills through pharmacies and telehealth in states where abortion remains legal. At least three lawsuits are pending, and some states that have banned abortion altogether or have restricted access to it are vowing to block the new federal rules. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for example, has threatened to prosecute any pharmacist who sells the pills in her state.

As experts on reproductive health and justice, we’re trying to untangle when and where mifepristone might be available and what these contradictory trends signal.

Prescribing abortion drugs

Who has the authority to determine when, how or whether abortion medication can be prescribed and sold?

Under its long-held, congressionally granted authority to regulate pharmaceutical products, the FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 after an extensive review demonstrated that the drug was safe and effective for early pregnancy termination.

From the beginning, the sale of mifepristone was tied to several safety requirements known as a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy. Initially, the drug had to be dispensed by certified medical providers in person.

But in late 2021, the FDA concluded that was no longer necessary for patient safety. Today, the pill, in its original or generic form, is approved for use up to 10 weeks’ gestation and can be dispensed by a certified prescriber or pharmacy.

Recent lawsuits challenge the scope of the FDA’s authority to regulate the sale of mifepristone.

In one, GenBioPro, a drug company that makes generic mifepristone, sued officials in West Virginia, claiming that the state’s abortion ban impedes its sales. GenBioPro argues that the ban contradicts FDA’s approval of and safety requirements for mifepristone, setting up a conflict between federal and state law.

In short, the drugmaker argues that the federal regulations override West Virginia’s abortion restrictions. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, however, plans to defend the abortion ban vigorously because “the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a state issue.”

Protesters in Raleigh, N.C., object to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling on June 25, 2022. Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In another pending lawsuit, Bryant v. Stein, obstetrician-gynecologist Amy Bryant sued officials in North Carolina on similar grounds. Although North Carolina has not banned abortion, it imposes a number of restrictions, including a 72-hour waiting period before accessing medical or surgical abortions.

Bryant argues that the restrictions exceed the FDA requirements for dispensing mifepristone and are therefore preempted by federal law.

There is limited precedent in this area.

In one case, the manufacturer of an opioid – Zohydro – challenged a Massachusetts ban of the drug, even though the FDA had approved it. The federal court ruled for the manufacturer because the ban would “obstruct the FDA’s Congressionally-given charge.”

That 2014 opinion might suggest that GenBioPro will succeed. On the other hand, a court might distinguish the two cases: Massachusetts banned Zohydro on public health grounds, which is squarely within the FDA’s authority, while West Virginia bans abortions on moral grounds – to protect fetal life – which is outside the FDA’s purview.

In the North Carolina case, the state does not ban mifepristone; it just imposes more restrictions than the FDA requires. Therefore, it is uncertain whether the Zohydro reasoning would be adopted.

A 2008 Supreme Court case, however, might be relevant.

In Wyeth v. Levine, a drugmaker claimed that FDA labeling requirements for a drug made by Wyeth, which was used to prevent allergies and motion sickness, preempted Vermont’s stricter labeling requirements. The Supreme Court rejected that argument. It concluded instead that allowing states to require stronger warnings didn’t interfere with Congress’ purpose in entrusting the FDA with drug labeling decisions.

Wyeth is not precisely like Bryant, however.

Whereas Wyeth dealt with labeling requirements, Bryant deals with regulations that affect access to a drug. Nevertheless, the Wyeth precedent could allow a court to permit states to impose stronger restrictions on access to mifepristone – as long as they fall short of banning the drug outright.

Until now, most abortion drugs have been dispensed in person at clinics. 

Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Banning mifepristone

Another pending lawsuit may threaten the FDA’s authority to authorize any sales of mifepristone in the United States.

In Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, a group of abortion opponents asked a U.S. district court in November 2022 to force the FDA to stop allowing mifepristone sales anywhere in the United States. The lawsuit argues that the FDA “chose politics over science” and “exceeded its regulatory authority” in various ways, including allegedly disregarding “substantial evidence” that medication abortion is riskier than surgical abortions.

The consequences could be quite significant, and the issue could even end up on the Supreme Court’s docket in the future. Nevertheless, there are compelling legal reasons why this lawsuit should fail.



Some of the same organizations have tried to challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone before – without success. And in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found no irregularities in the FDA’s approval and oversight of mifepristone.

In contradiction to the plaintiffs’ safety argument, numerous studies have shown mifepristone to be a safe and effective drug.

Nevertheless, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who sits in Amarillo, Texas, and is hearing this case regarding whether the FDA should rescind its approval of mifepristone, has not been supportive of reproductive rights in the past. Thus, it is possible that the court could try to stop the FDA from allowing mifepristone to be sold in that part of Texas or even, possibly, across the entire nation.

If the court prevents the sale of mifepristone nationwide, medication abortions would only be possible with the other pill, misoprostol, which is also approved for other purposes. Recent data suggests that this one-drug approach to medication abortions may safely and effectively induce abortion.
Pills in interstate commerce

In addition to questions of whether the FDA’s authority can override state-imposed abortion restrictions, there’s a second issue concerning the ability to sell the pills through interstate commerce.

As the Supreme Court has explained, the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate “things in interstate commerce,” as well as “those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”

Thus, in the GenBioPrio lawsuit pending in West Virginia, the company argues that state efforts to restrict sale of the pill are unconstitutional.

An organization that opposes abortion filed a lawsuit in a court located in Amarillo, Texas, that seeks to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Mailing abortion pills

Many people are also taking abortion pills they get through the mail. In response to that trend, 20 Republican state attorneys general recently threatened pharmacies with “legal consequences” if they mail and distribute mifepristone.

An 1873 law, the Comstock Act, is central to the issue of whether it is legal to mail abortion pills. That law makes it a crime to use the mail for any “lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article” as well as any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use of apply it for producing abortion.”

When the Comstock Act was enacted, of course, modern delivery services like FedEx and UPS did not exist. But the law also prohibits any “express company” from engaging in the same acts.

The U.S. Postal Service asked the Justice Department whether abortion pills can be mailed under the Comstock Act, and it responded with a carefully worded 21-page opinion in late December 2022. The opinion concludes that mailing the abortion pills is not illegal so long as the sender “lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.”

As the opinion pointed out, recipients could use the drugs for a variety of reasons that would be legal in every state. For example, the combination can “treat a miscarriage,” and misoprostol can prevent and treat gastric ulcers.

Regardless of how Judge Kacsmaryk rules, we expect to see medication abortion remain available in states that don’t have abortion bans. But we also are certain that legal challenges over abortion access will continue.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia and Sonia Suter, George Washington University.

Read more:

What the FDA’s rule changes allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to be dispensed by pharmacies mean in practice – 5 questions answered


Abortion pills are safe to prescribe without in-person exams, new research finds

VEEP

Kamala Harris Subtly Emerges as Powerful White House Asset

“And I said it before and I will say it again,” she added. “How dare they?”

Philip Elliott

TIME
Mon, January 23, 2023 

50th commemoration of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in Tallahassee
Vice President Kamala Harris poses for photos with participants at the 50th commemoration of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in Tallahassee Fla., on January 22, 2023. 

Credit - Peter Zay—Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

As she started her closing cadence in front of an enthusiastic crowd, it was clear Vice President Kamala Harris was in her element—and remains both a misunderstood and potentially potent force in Democratic politics.

​​”Know this: President Biden and I agree, and we will never back down,” Harris said to applause in Tallahassee on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that once guaranteed the federal right to abortion. “We will not back down. We know this fight will not be won until we secure this right for every American.”

As Harris thundered through her remarks, with American flags behind her and supporters before her, she enjoyed that quality that has become all too rare in politics: credibility. Despite all of the political headwinds against her on the issue, Harris convinced many in the crowd that her promises were not only plausible, but within reach. “Congress must pass a bill that protects freedom and liberty,” she said.

The scheduled speech on a sleepy Sunday far from Washington—but in the backyard of both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump—would do little to move the national debate on federal abortion rights, which fell in June with a crash emanating from the Supreme Court. But Harris’ remarks and the reception—including 32 applause interruptions by the White House transcript’s count—served as a reminder that, even with plenty of bumps and detours during her first two years as a history-making Vice President, she still can bring the heat. And, in that, her fellow Democrats might slow their seemingly endless criticism of the first woman to hold the job, as well as the first person of Black or South Asian descent to earn it.

Harris, by all accounts, didn’t exactly launch her time as President Joe Biden’s understudy with ease. It seemed every quarter brought with it a new Harris Resets story in the political pages. In the administration’s early days, she largely filled her offices with veterans of the campaign—Biden’s, not hers. In fact, most of her high-profile aides from her Senate office and short-lived presidential bid scattered throughout the administration, landing perfectly admirable posts but not in her inner circle. The result was high turnover on her team, as well as a series of embarrassing stories about her treatment of aides.

Then, there was the scheduling challenge. Few Vice Presidents have had to contend with an evenly split Senate. Because of her ability to break tie votes in that chamber, Harris had to often make sure she was a quick motorcade from the Capitol. She has so far cast 26 such tied votes—or roughly 9% of all tie-breaking votes cast in the Senate since 1789. As such, she spent a ton of time in her office just off the Senate floor, often doubling as a deciding vote and informal congressional liaison to her former colleagues.

But, with Republicans now stuck at 49 votes, Harris’ 101st vote won’t be needed as often. (Of course, errant Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin or Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema can still gum up the math.) Now less encumbered by the Senate vote schedule, Harris is looking forward to getting back on the road, helping to sell the Biden team’s record and leading the charge on goals like securing voting rights and abortion rights—neither of which are likely to advance much under a Republican House—and selling the merits of legislation passed over the last two years, such as an infrastructure package and a climate change agenda.

Then there are questions of her future ambitions—always a fraught discussion that in D.C. can easily devolve into coded conversations about race and gender, two factors that simply cannot be ignored when it comes to Harris. Her defenders aren’t wrong to point out that the first woman of color in her role faces the double-whammy that separately dogged Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Harris’ original bid for the presidency ended before Iowa’s lead-off caucuses. By all accounts, she served as a capable and loyal running-mate.

Personally, Biden has great admiration for Harris, who served as state attorney general in California concurrent to the late Beau Biden’s time in the role in Delaware. As a former VP himself, Biden has sought to give Harris a portfolio commensurate with her talents, including the intractable troubles at the U.S.-Mexican border, voting rights, and abortion rights. Harris’ apologists grimly note those are all massive issues, each of them likely impossible for one person to significantly address; yet her boosters say they match Harris’ abilities to untangle knots.

Still, the relationship between Biden and Harris is complicated, made more so when Biden seemed like an uncertain contender in 2024. With Biden seemingly ready to launch his re-election bid, Harris’ dreams for a promotion are on ice. After all, no one challenges a sitting President with any meaningful success, especially not from inside the tent. But it does set up the test for Harris: if she is the party’s heir apparent—and not, say, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—Harris needs to rack up some successes to point to, whether they come due in 2024 or 2028. Biden may end up professing neutrality, but that gets tricky if he sees any suggestion of disloyalty.

All of which explains why Harris has made abortion rights a central piece of her political identity. Since Roe fell, she has met with leaders from 38 states, including lawmakers from 18 states. She’s been subtly making herself the voice with a megaphone no one can ignore.

During her speech on Sunday, Harris announced the Biden administration would protect access to mifepristone, the abortion pill. The Food and Drug Administration earlier this month finalized a rule that allows women to obtain abortion pills via telehealth consultations. Against this backdrop, Florida lawmakers are considering moving to ban abortions after 12 weeks—down from 15 there.

“Even in states that protect reproductive rights, like New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, even there people live in fear of what might be next, because Republicans in Congress are now calling for a nationwide abortion ban,” Harris said. “Even from the moment of conception, the right of every woman in every state in this country to make decisions about her own body is on the line.”

“And I said it before and I will say it again,” she added. “How dare they?”

Such outrage over the fall of Roe powered Democratic candidates to unexpectedly strong showings in the midterm elections. Democrats defied history, holding steady in the Senate and only barely losing the majority in the House. Many point to her campaign travel schedule as proof that Harris played no small role in that accomplishment. By the time votes were being tallied, a full 27% of Americans counted abortion as the most important issue for their vote, second only to inflation. It was a surefire winner for Democrats, with those counting abortion as their most important issue breaking by a walloping 53 points. And among the broader public, according to exit polls, 59% of voters last year said abortion should remain legal.

If you’re Harris and seeing these numbers while still considering your next move, such data points are reason to lean-in on abortion rights. It has the added bonus of coming from a place of sincerity.

Kamala Harris swipes at DeSantis using his 'vanguard of freedom' quote, on the governor's home turf, as she announces new moves on abortion pill

Kimberly Leonard
Sun, January 22, 2023

In this article:

Vice President Kamala Harris listens as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters before attending a breakfast at the Vice Presidents residence at the Naval Observatory on January 13, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Harris said federal officials will work to make the abortion pill more widely available.

She did in Tallahassee at a time when DeSantis is a leading potential 2024 White House contender.

Harris' invoked DeSantis-favorite themes of "freedom and liberty."

Vice President Kamala Harris directly hit Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his "freedom and liberty" rhetoric and policies during a landmark abortion rights speech on Sunday in Tallahassee, showing a willingness by the Biden administration to take on the Republican rising star directly.

Her remarks signal that Democrats are working to flip the "freedom" script against Republicans, who have in recent years heralded it as their own amid Biden administration-imposed COVID restrictions.

None have done so more so than DeSantis, who called his forthcoming agenda for Florida the "Freedom Blueprint" and frequently refers to his home state as "the free state of Florida" or "the freest state."

"Can we truly be free if so-called leaders claim to be — I quote, 'on the vanguard of freedom' while they dare to restrict the rights of the American people and attack the very foundations of freedom?" said Harris, who didn't use DeSantis' name but was quoting directly from his 2022 State of the State address.

Harris's speech — right in DeSantis' home state by the US's first female vice president — comes just days after Florida health officials sent a letter to pharmacies warning them not to dispense the abortion pill mifepristone.

The vice president, who has been at the forefront voice for the administration's on abortion rights, announced that President Joe Biden would be signing a memorandum to make abortion pills easier to access. It'll have federal officials consider new ways for patients to get mifepristone, a medication that ends a pregnancy through 10 weeks of gestation. It would also direct those agencies to find ways for patients to access abortion "free from harassment, threats, or violence."

"Can we truly be free if a woman cannot make decisions about her own body? Can we truly be free if a doctor cannot care for her patients? Can we truly be free if families cannot make intimate decisions about the course of their own lives?" Harris, speaking delivered at a concert and nightclub venue the Moon, said.

Harris' speech follows a letter from Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration, which said pharmacies were not allowed to dispense the abortion pill because under state law a doctor must be the one to give it to patients, after an initial meeting 24 hours earlier.

Seventeen other states have similar prescribing laws as Florida. But the Sunshine State is unique in that DeSantis may be only months away from declaring a 2024 presidential run. A Suffolk University poll released in early January shows DeSantis may have the edge on defeating Biden if he's the GOP nominee.

Democrats have warned a national abortion ban is possible if Republicans control the White House and Congress. "People live in fear of what might be next," Harris said during her remarks.

Congressional Republicans haven't coalesced behind a national abortion ban, though some such as Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have backed a national 15-week ban.

This month the Biden administration, through the Food and Drug Administration, allowed major pharmacy retailers such as CVS Health and Walgreens to provide patients with the abortion pill when they have a prescription, as long as the pharmacies complete a certification process.

Previously, patients could legally get the abortion pill through the mail after a visit with a doctor over telehealth, or when a doctor gave it to them at a clinic. It's not clear whether state laws will be able to override the FDA's decision, and a court ruling may be necessary to settle the answer to that question, reported Stat News.

More than half of abortions in the US are done with medication instead of surgery. Patients often will take another pill, called misoprostol, to trigger a miscarriage.

Sunday would have marked the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed a national right to abortion. The conservative supermajority Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision last summer, and since then some states have banned abortion and others have increased access.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaks to supporters Tuesday, August 23, 2022, in Hialeah, Florida.

Gaston De Cardenas, File/AP Photo

It's unclear how Florida will restrict abortion next

DeSantis has been gradually rolling out his agenda in recent weeks, though abortion is one area where he hasn't offered specifics. Asked about which abortion restrictions he'd be willing to sign into law, the governor has said only that he would "expand pro-life protections."

State lawmakers won't be meeting over the issue until March at the earliest when the legislature will begin its session. Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, a Republican, said she would be open to restricting abortions to 12 weeks, but that a new law must include exceptions for rape and incest.

Florida already makes it illegal to have an abortion after 15 weeks through a measure DeSantis signed into law, though it's before the state Supreme Court.

Nikki Fried, Florida's former agriculture commissioner who lost the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to Charlie Crist, told Insider she feared DeSantis would go further to restrict abortion rights during this forthcoming legislative session to appeal to GOP presidential primary voters.

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, co-executive director of Florida Access Network, which helps coordinate patient travel, lodging, and expenses related to abortion, told Insider that she was worried Florida would force a complete ban on medication abortion.

"Our dignity, bodily autonomy, and right to self-determination should be protected and we ask this administration to enact immediate measures to protect and expand access to abortion care," Piñeiro, who attended Harris' speech, said.

During her remarks Sunday, Harris urged Congress to vote for the Women's Health Protection Act, saying it would "protect freedom and liberty." The bill has no chance of passage because Republicans control the US House.

Instead, the House passed legislation that would criminalize doctors who fail to provide neonatal care following a botched abortion late in pregnancy. It won't be taken up in the Democratic-controlled Senate, who — like doctors who perform late-pregnancy abortions — have argued that later abortions occur mainly in cases of severe fetal anomalies.

No robust data exists on the reasons couples choose third-trimester abortions, and such cases make up less than 1% of total abortions in the US, show studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The DeSantis War Room mocked Harris on Twitter for talking about "freedom" after having speech attendees sign a letter attesting they were fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The Republican Party of Florida directly addressed the abortion issue and called Harris a "far-left radical."

"Democrats are proudly cheerleading barbaric policies to allow unrestricted abortions — including infanticide," RPOF said. "That's all anyone needs to know."

The Women's Health Protection Act that the Biden administration backs does not allow for post-birth termination but until fetal viability, which is generally understood to be at about 24 weeks into a pregnancy. It also allows abortions after viability for "health" reasons but doesn't specify whether this means physical, psychological, or emotional health, or whether someone's age can also be a factor.

Former Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022. SHE COULD HAVE BEAT DESANTIS UNLIKE USED TIRE CRISTI

Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo

Florida has other ways of expanding abortion rights

Abortion rights proved to be a liability for Republicans in the November midterms.

In early January, DeSantis was also attacked from the right for his abortion policies. Ian Fury, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem's spokesman, criticized DeSantis for "hiding behind a 15-week ban" in comments to National Review.

"Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don't have a right to live?" Fury asked.

Senior Biden administration officials said during a phone call with reporters Wednesday that the Biden team picked Florida for Harris to make her speech about abortion rights given the state's 15-week abortion ban, which doesn't have exceptions for rape and incest.

Still, they added that Florida was "a place that offers greater access than its neighbors" because surrounding states have abortion bans that begin even earlier in pregnancy.

Reproductive rights groups are working to put the issue of abortion before Florida voters through a 2024 ballot measure. Fried told Insider that advocates were still early in the process as they worked to get the precise, legal language of the ballot correct. After that, the work of gathering signatures will kick off.

Fried plans to be involved in any way she can, whether through fundraising or holding press conferences, she told Insider.

"We still have a fight ahead of us to protect a woman's right to choose," Fried said. "We are not going to let go. We are going to keep fighting for this issue and we are going to organize to be at the forefront, and we are not going to back down."

RIP

Henry Berg-Brousseau, Transgender Rights Activist, Has Died at 24

Alex Cooper
Wed, December 21, 2022 

Henry Berg-Brousseau

Trans rights activist Henry Berg-Brousseau, who worked to oppose anti-transgender legislation in his home state of Kentucky before going on to work with the Human Rights Campaign, died Friday at the age of 24.

His mother, Kentucky Democratic state Sen. Karen Berg, said Berg-Brousseau died by suicide.

In a statement posted on Twitter via Bluegrass Politics, Berg said that her son had spent his life “working to extend grace, compassion, and understanding to everyone, but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized.”

She added that “this grace, compassion, and understanding was not always returned to him” as a transgender man. The state senator called out the politicians who actively sought to marginalize her son because of who Berg-Brousseau was.

Berg said Berg-Brousseau had dealt with mental illness, “not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.”

He was born in Louisville, Ky., according to an obituary.

“While a student at Louisville Collegiate School, he advocated for the rights of transgender people by organizing a protest against gay conversion therapy, speaking to the Kentucky Senate Education Committee, and participating in other local and national causes. His speech to the committee was shared on John Oliver Tonight,” it said.

Berg-Brousseau went on to double major at George Washington University in political science and history and minored in Jewish studies.

In his work with the Human Rights Campaign, Berg said her son was acutely aware of the hateful rhetoric rising against transgender people in the country, adding that he saw that hate firsthand directed at his job. She said that in one of the final conversations she would have with her son he told her that he was concerned if he would be safe going out.

“The vitriol against trans people is not happening in a vacuum,” Berg wrote. “It is not just a way of scoring political points by exacerbating the culture wars. It has real-world implications for how transgender people view their place in the world and how they are treated as they just try to live their lives.”

Berg-Brousseau is survived by his mother, his father, and his sister, along with other family members.

“Losing Henry is an unfathomable loss to the Human Rights Campaign family. Henry was a light — deeply passionate, deeply engaged, and deeply caring. His colleagues will always remember his hunger for justice, his eagerness to pitch in, his bright presence, and his indelible sense of humor,” Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

Robinson noted his activist work as a teenager, having to fight for his own rights “far earlier than he should have had to.”

“He was brave,” she said.

She ended her statement by calling for justice for the transgender community.

“We must fight for our transgender family. We must celebrate his light, and honor him by continuing to fight for full equality for all,” Robinson said. “Our thoughts are with his parents, his sister, his entire family, and our whole community.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available to help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 is for people of all ages and identities.

Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations.

The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.

Transgender advocacy group plans to sue state over contract cancellation



John Hult
Thu, December 22, 2022

A transgender advocacy organization plans to sue the state of South Dakota for civil rights violations over Gov. Kristi Noem’s abrupt cancellation of a health care facilitation contract with the group.

Brendan Johnson, a former U.S. district attorney who works for the law firm Robins Kaplan, told South Dakota Searchlight that his firm will represent The Transformation Project at no cost in a civil action against the state.

Johnson said he plans to send the state a litigation hold this week, which is a legal notice of pending action that orders the expected defendant to preserve all records and correspondence related to a legal claim.

The group’s claim originates with the contract cancellation, Johnson said, but “it’s not a contract dispute.”

“This is about violating federal law, equal protection,” Johnson said. “You cannot discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. We believe that’s in violation of agreements between the state of South Dakota and the federal government that provided these funds.”

The Sioux Falls-based nonprofit was awarded about $136,000 in federal funds to hire and train a community health worker to help connect members of the LGBTQ community to physical and mental health care. The funds, dispensed by the state, were earmarked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for the hiring of community health workers to serve rural areas and marginalized communities.

For a story published on Friday, a conservative media outlet questioned Gov. Noem’s office about the contract. Through spokesman Ian Fury, Noem, a Republican, told the outlet that she does not support the group’s “radical ideology,” that she didn’t know about the contract, and that she would order a review of all state Department of Health contracts. More than 60 other community health worker contracts have been granted this year.

State Health Secretary Joan Adam announced her retirement through a governor’s office press release on Monday, three days after the news broke.

More:Transformation Project responds to South Dakota terminating contract for community health worker

The Freedom Caucus, a coalition of South Dakota lawmakers aligned with the Freedom Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives, issued a statement Monday that praised Noem’s decision to cut the contract. It also called on the South Dakota attorney general to investigate The Transformation Project and Sanford Health, which is set to host a Gender Identity Summit next month, for “promoting child abuse.”

Johnson said his firm aims to show that the stated reasons for the contract cancellation do not align with the Noem administration’s actual motivations.

“The facts will show that The Transformation Project did not violate its contract with the state of South Dakota,” Johnson said. “This was a decision based on politics, not the law. We applaud the strength and dignity of the LGBTQ community, and we will aggressively defend their right to access health care and the vital services provided by The Transformation Project, including mental health and suicide prevention services.”

In the cancellation letter, Deputy Health Secretary Lynne Valenti said The Transformation Project had failed to hire a certified community health worker and had missed a required annual conference, among other violations. But The Transformation Project has said it hired a community health worker who is still employed by the group, and the required annual conference took place before the contract was awarded.

The group’s director, Susan Williams, said in an open letter that the group was in compliance with contract terms. It had received about $23,000 of contract funds before the Dec. 16 cancellation letter.

“We are also deeply concerned by the appearance that the termination of this contract stems not from our actions, but as a result of the population we serve,” Williams said.

Williams named the community health worker hired by the group to South Dakota Searchlight and noted that he’d completed his certification. On Tuesday evening, the group tweeted its congratulations to that employee along with a photo of staff and supporters. Two of the people were wearing hoodies from the Union Gospel Mission, a homeless shelter that had also been awarded funds for a community health worker, and whose director told South Dakota Searchlight this week that his “heart goes out” to the group over the dispute.

The Transformation Project also announced its intention to retain the employee despite the loss of funding. It has since set up a pledge website that asks the public to “raise $105,000 to cover the funding shortfall that was created.”

“These funds will help us to continue to develop a Community Health Worker program and allow our CHW to meet the needs of South Dakota members of the LGBTQ2S community across the state who experience disparate health outcomes,” the site said.

The group will not be charged legal fees for its action against the state, Johnson said, but taxpayers won’t avoid them.

More:Gov. Kristi Noem terminates contract for transgender advocacy group

“This is incredibly unfair to one of our most vulnerable populations in South Dakota,” Johnson said. “This will be a long and expensive fight. This is going to cost the state of South Dakota a great deal in legal fees.”

Fury, Noem’s spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight on Tuesday that the state would be unable to comment on The Transformation Project situation because of the threat of litigation.

On Thursday morning, Fury reiterated that the state cannot comment for that reason.

On Monday, South Dakota Searchlight sent an email to Fury and Department of Health spokeswoman Kieran Tate, asking if three other community health worker contractors who’d inked deals around the same time as The Transformation Project had complied with each of the same contract requirements. Tate has not replied.

A spokesman for the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office, which typically serves as the state’s legal counsel in lawsuits against state agencies and officials, said the litigation hold had not been received as of Thursday morning.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Transgender advocacy group plans to sue state over contract cancellation

THIRD WORLD U$A

Thousands trapped on Pine Ridge burn clothes for warmth in wake of storm

Darsha Dodge
Thu, December 22, 2022

With a twinge of cold in her toes and a tone of concern tinted by exhaustion, Anna Halverson relayed the message: “We’re in a really extreme emergency down here.

Winter Storm Diaz blanketed the Pine Ridge Reservation in more than 30 inches of snow – incredible enough on its own – but it was amplified by intense winds that brought the area to a standstill under drifts of snow several feet high.

A semi truck and trailer blocking a major highway on the Pine Ridge Reservation during Winter Storm Diaz.

Halverson, who represents the Pass Creek District on the Pine Ridge Reservation, described their harrowing situation to the Journal on Thursday.

“It’s been really tough,” she said. “We don’t have the proper equipment here to handle what’s been going on. We have drifts as high as some houses that stretch 60, 70 yards at a time.”

More than 10 days since the storm began, Diaz has moved on and the skies have started to clear, but the recovery process is just beginning. Halverson didn’t get dug out of her house until eight days after the storm. Others are still trapped, reachable only by snowmobile.

It seems like every time we open the road, the snow just drifts it back over,” she said.

More:Gov. Kristi Noem declares 'winter storm emergency' for South Dakota; activates National Guard

It’s an incredibly scary situation, she explained, as many of those snowed-in are missing dialysis treatments or dealing with other medical emergencies. One family ran out of infant formula, and spent four days drifted in before attempting to leave, Halverson said.

“We even talked about using drone drops to get the baby some Enfamil, because the baby was starving,” she said.

But Mother Nature wasn’t done yet.

If being trapped by formidable walls of ice and snow wasn’t enough, subzero temperatures, brought down by an Arctic front, took an already struggling region by the neck. Temperatures dropped into the negative teens and 20s this week, and the unkind Midwest wind shredded those figures with wind chills in the negative 40s and negative 50s.

Total snow reports from Dec. 13 - 16 in Western South Dakota

Cold like that is deadly, just another blow to a reservation already crippled by conditions, Halverson said.

“Most of our members use wood stoves,” she said. “We’re not able to get them with deliveries because of the roads. A lot of our members across the reservation have no propane, because the propane companies can’t reach their tanks to fill. Even right now in my district, we haven’t had anybody able to deliver out to these members that have no propane since the storm started.”

Oglala-based service organization Re-Member provides firewood to families on all corners of the reservation, but the drifts of snow have rendered their wood stockpile inaccessible still – and it’ll be that way for the foreseeable future.

“Our wood pile remains inaccessible,” read a Facebook post on Dec. 20. “Our skid steer and plow are out-of-service. Given the conditions, it would be near impossible to operate our equipment and unsafe for our staff to work in the conditions we are facing. We appreciate the efforts being made by many to keep the Oyate safe during these challenging times.”

Those that can try to use electric heaters, which Halverson said isn’t keeping houses warm. Even her own furnace went out, blowing cold air in an already frigid atmosphere. She was able to travel to her mother’s house to keep her family warm.

Power went out in some places, once for 18 hours, she said. People with cars tried to use them to stay warm.

Reservation residents are resorting to last-ditch efforts to ward off the unimaginable cold.

More:Sioux Falls Regional Airport will close through much of Friday due to blizzard

“I’ve seen across the reservation some members were burning clothes in their wood stove because they couldn’t get access to wood,” Halverson said.

The conditions got so bad so quickly that Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out penned a proclamation declaring a state of emergency.

“These current blizzard conditions have caused closure of all BIA and tribal secondary roads on the reservation due to falling snow, high winds and snow drifts,” Star Comes Out wrote. “Such blizzard conditions pose an imminent threat to tribal government operations, to public safety and the health of tribal members who currently do not have access to medical care, such as dialysis, ambulance service for crisis intervention medical care such as heart attacks and delivering babies, and private transportation to secure food and other necessities of life.”

Halverson praised his efforts in trying to get help for the people of Pine Ridge. The exhaustion in her voice dissipated – for a brief second – calling her people “survivors.”

“We don’t live on our reservation,” she said. “We survive on our reservation. We’re in serious need of some help.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Thousands trapped on Pine Ridge burn clothes for warmth in wake of storm

AS GOES TENNESSEE SO GOES AMERIKA

Tennessee showdown: Governor's big plan for right-wing charter schools sparks fierce backlash

After right-wing education hero insults teachers, Tennesseans push back on Bill Lee's charter plan. Is it too late?

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED AUGUST 22, 2022 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and President of Hillsdale College Larry Arnn

 (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/Mandel Ngan/AFP/WikiCommons/Gage Skidmore)

The mailers arrived last week: four-page glossy brochures containing excerpted articles from The Federalist and USA Today, telling Tennesseans they'd been misled about Hillsdale College. They followed the previous week's text message campaign, when voters across the state began receiving political spam attributed to Hillsdale chief marketing officer Bill Gray, insisting that people throughout the Volunteer State were clamoring for Hillsdale to open K-12 charter schools, and directing them to a recently-built website where they could learn "the truth" about Hillsdale's work in Tennessee.

The website covered the same ground as the mailers — four pieces all dedicated to defending the small, conservative Christian college from Michigan that has become a center of right-wing educational activism — and an opening message from Hillsdale president Larry Arnn, offering an explanation of why, "Over the past few months, Hillsdale College and I have been the subject of controversy in Tennessee."

Related

Salon investigates: The war on public schools is being fought from Hillsdale College

This was all a belated damage control effort, coming six weeks after investigative journalist Phil Williams, of Tennessee's News Channel 5, published secretly-recorded video of Arnn declaring, during a closed-door event with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, that public school teachers come from "the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country." At that same reception, Arnn had argued that most college diversity officers get education degrees because they're "easy"; that teachers are "messing with people's children, and they feel entitled to do anything to them"; that modern education is akin to "enslavement" and "the plague" that "destroys generations of people"; and that he aimed to prove "that you don't have to be an expert to educate a child. Because basically anybody can do it."

The Arnn video dropped like a bomb amid both growing Republican orthodoxy on school privatization initiatives — with support for vouchers and charters rapidly becoming a party litmus test — and what, until that point, had seemed like Hillsdale's year. Five months earlier, in his January State of the State address, Lee had announced he was embarking on a formal partnership with Hillsdale — a school he characterized as "the standard bearer in quality curriculum and the responsibility of preserving American liberty" — to open some 50 public charter schools across the state, as well as implementing Hillsdale's ideas about "informed patriotism" through a new Institute of American Civics to be launched at the University of Tennessee's flagship campus.

At the time, Tennessee's Republican-dominated legislature gave the announcement a standing ovation. The partnership looked to be a crowning achievement for Hillsdale, setting 2022 up as a year of exponentially growing influence for a school that has long punched above its weight. As Salon reported in a three-part investigative series in March, Hillsdale has quietly become one of the most influential forces in conservative politics. The school's 1,500-student campus in southern Michigan draws leading right-wing intellectuals, politicians and even Supreme Court justices. Its Washington, D.C., branch hosts a rotating cast of conservative pundits and Republican staffers as guest faculty.

When Donald Trump sought to rebut the New York Times' "1619 Project," with its emphasis on the central role of slavery in America's founding, he turned to Arnn and another top Hillsdale official to lead his "1776 Commission." And since the school began a national network of publicly-funded charter schools in 2010, Hillsdale's "classical education" model — extolling Western civilization, American exceptionalism and the idea that America was founded on "Judeo-Christian" principles — has become the chief model of what conservatives want to see in education.

Its influence has been felt far beyond Tennessee. In Florida, which has a number of Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools, the college enjoys close ties to the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis. At a Hillsdale leadership summit this February, DeSantis and Arnn traded compliments, with Arnn calling the governor "one of the most important people living" and DeSantis saying he'd rather hire a Hillsdale graduate than one from his own alma mater, Yale, because he knew the former would "have the foundations necessary" to help pursue "conservative policies."

Several years ago, Hillsdale was tapped to help overhaul Florida's civics standards along more "patriotic" lines. Following the release of those revamped standards, Hillsdale was again contracted to help train teachers to implement them this summer. As the Miami Herald's Ana Ceballos and Sommer Brugal reported in late June, the first trainings led to immediate complaints from teachers that the standards seemed set on advancing Christian nationalism and minimizing the horrors of U.S. chattel slavery (in keeping with Hillsdale's "1776 Curriculum," which argues that even slave-owning founding fathers were closet abolitionists).

In a follow-up story this July, Ceballos and Brugal reported that two people associated with Hillsdale — a staffer involved with the "1776 Curriculum" and the head of the school's College Republicans club — had been hired to screen textbooks for "prohibited topics," leading to the DeSantis administration's April announcement that it had rejected nearly half the math textbooks schools had submitted for approval on the grounds that they promoted critical race theory or social emotional learning.

In Arizona, far-right gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has declared that she "believe[s] in the Hillsdale College curriculum" as one that "makes sense" and "sets our kids up for success," as that state's NBC 12 reported last week. A spokesperson for Lake elaborated that the candidate, who also wants to ban diversity, equity and inclusion training in public schools, had chosen Hillsdale's curriculum "as an alternative to the biased, CRT-based indoctrination permeating current textbooks and lesson plans." In 2018, another Arizona Republican, then-superintendent of public instruction Diane Douglas, who promoted the anti-evolution "Intelligent Design" theory, unsuccessfully tried to get Hillsdale's curriculum adopted by the state's entire public school system to replace its history and science standards, which she denounced as "vague and incomplete at best, indoctrination at worst."

Related

School's out forever: Arizona moves "to kill public education" with new universal voucher law

And in South Dakota, where Arnn says pro-Trump Republican Gov. Kristi Noem offered to build Hillsdale a whole new campus, a newly-concluded effort to overhaul the state's social studies standards was also tied to Hillsdale. The 15-person workgroup that drafted the standards — which included 13 registered Republicans but only three currently certified teachers from the state — was led by former Hillsdale professor William Morrisey. As Corey Allen Heidelberg reported this April at the Dakota Free Press, one person who applied to join the workgroup claimed the hiring committee told them "the draft standards were already being created at Hillsdale College."

The final standards, which were released last week, include lessons on "patriotism" and warn that neither "Debating current political positions" nor "partaking in political activism at the bequest of a school or teacher" belong in the classroom. But the document includes its fair share of contentious conservative political arguments, including a provision that students must explain how Progressivism (classed alongside totalitarianism, communism, socialism and fascism) stands in "tension" with "America's founding principles." Other sections reiterate ideas found in Hillsdale's curricula, including that the "main Progressive ideas" depart from the Constitution and Declaration of Independence; that even slave-holding founding fathers "wished" for abolition; and that U.S. slavery must be compared with slavery and indentured servitude in Africa, Europe and elsewhere.

* * *

Amid this sprawling, somewhat amorphous sphere of influence, Hillsdale's contract with Tennessee was set to take the tiny college's vision for an empire of classical academies to the next level. All that abruptly came into question after the report of Arnn's comments, and the revelation that Lee had sat through them silently, listening while, as Williams reported, Arnn "hinted" that Lee "might have what it takes to be president someday." Lee said nothing in defense of his state's public school teachers, but did pipe up to say at one point that he believed Tennessee needed not just 50 but 100 Hillsdale charters.

The backlash was quick and explosive, and surprisingly bipartisan.

J.C. Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, a teachers' union, said he was "infuriated" by Arnn's "clear disdain for public educators." One of the state's principals' associations suggested that anyone who "could speak so vehemently against educators and educator preparation programs" should "be blackballed from having an impact on the system." Tennessee's association of superintendents invoked Teddy Roosevelt to vow that it would "work diligently to resist the efforts of misguided critics who are not 'in the arena' and whose supercilious opinions are worthy only of collective disdain."
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Democratic politicians, of course, promptly condemned Arnn's remarks. State Sen. Heidi Campbell tweeted, "There is not a single community in Tennessee that would willingly defund their own public schools in exchange for a charter affiliated with Gov. Bill Lee's offensive friend or Hillsdale College." Jason Martin, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee running against Lee this fall, launched a petition arguing that "our public school teachers who sacrifice so much daily should not fall victim to a governor who wants to radicalize our children through far-right, cherrypicked, 'pseudo-education' using *illegal* voucher based schooling."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

But even in deep-red Tennessee, Republicans joined in as well. House Speaker Cameron Sexton declared that Arnn had "insulted generations of teachers." Rep. Mark White, chair of Tennessee's House education committee, wrote on Facebook, "When the General Assembly convenes again next January any hope that Hillsdale will operate in Tennessee has been shattered." Lt. Gov. Randy McNally warned that Arnn's comments would "feature prominently in the vetting process" for any proposed Hillsdale charter schools." Last week, in one of many school board resolutions supporting teachers or condemning Arnn, Williamson County school board member Eric Welch — a Republican who presides over the district where Gov. Lee grew up — decried Arnn's "very asinine" insults and Lee's "deafening" silence.

More substantially though, some schools and districts began to cut their ties with Hillsdale. At Skillern Elementary, a Chattanooga charter school that was set to implement Hillsdale's curriculum, administrators announced in early July that they had terminated their contract with the college in order to avoid "inaccurate" "media frenzies." By mid-July, three school boards that had received the first charter applications from Hillsdale — or, more precisely, from American Classical Education, the independent group established to manage the applications of Hillsdale's American Classical Academy charters — had rejected the proposals before them, with two citing Arnn's comments explicitly. One such board, in the Jackson-Madison district, passed a resolution stating that students would be poorly served by Hillsdale charters, given Arnn's "low opinion of school teachers and administrators."

At first, Lee tried to claim that Arnn hadn't been talking about Tennessee teachers but rather "left-leaning activists in the public education system." But by late July he seemed to be distancing himself from Arnn, saying that Hillsdale's charters were "not my vision" and that he'd only met Arnn "maybe five times" in the previous two years. Last week, Lee added that he was "not engaged in Hillsdale's efforts."

In the face of all this, Hillsdale has struggled to craft a response. A college spokesperson argued to the Tennessean, Nashville's daily newspaper, that Arnn wasn't belittling teachers but rather "educational bureaucracies" that fail teachers and students alike. In mid-July, Arnn published op-eds in both the Tennessean and USA Today, saying he'd made similar remarks "many times" in the past and likely would do so again, but when he did, he used "dumb" not to mean "unintelligent" but rather "ill-conceived."

Conservative commentators with ties to Hillsdale College have come to Arnn's defense, writing that public school teachers have low SAT scores and poor literacy skills, and are indoctrinated in "cultural Marxism."

Two additional defenses were published in conservative outlets by writers affiliated with Hillsdale. At The Federalist, executive editor Joy Pullman, a Hillsdale alumnus, argued that Arnn hadn't been "mocking the intelligence of all public school teachers," then went on to charge at length that teachers have below-average SAT scores; that teaching licensure exams were set at a reading level "one step past being merely able to sound out the words on the page"; and that teachers' colleges substitute "a strong indoctrination in cultural Marxism" for academic excellence. At the National Review, Kevin Williamson, who has taught at Hillsdale, more succinctly wrote, "Larry Arnn is right."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when those arguments were bundled into mailers and sent out across Tennessee, public anger didn't abate. Across Twitter, Tennesseans responded to Hillsdale's posts with variations on the directive, "Keep your ass out of Tennessee."

"People are just infuriated by Hillsdale at this point," said state Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat and former longtime public school teacher. "They're furious still."

* * *

But that's not the end of the story. In the words of Andy Spears, publisher of TN Ed Report, if people think that "Hillsdale is 'on pause' in Tennessee, that's not what's happening." For one thing, said Spears, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville's Hillsdale-inspired Institute of American Civics — one of a number of "civics" or "classics" institutes announced by red-state governors in recent months — continues apace. Beyond that, all three of the American Classical Academy charters denied by local school boards have filed appeals with the State Charter Commission: an entity created by a 2019 law that was promoted by Lee, who has since appointed all nine of its members.

That has led progressive and conservative observers alike to suspect the commission will overturn the local denials and accredit the charters on its own authority. Already this year the commission overturned another charter denial in one of the counties that rejected a Hillsdale application. As Spears notes, the website for American Classical Academy reads, without qualification, that it will open schools in all three counties in 2023.

"Preparations have been made to make this a slam dunk," said Republican state Sen. Bob Ramsey, in a podcast interview last week with the progressive outlet Tennessee Holler. "Preparations have been made legislatively that there's really going to be no options but to approve it."

All that is by design, says Jennifer Berkshire, coauthor with Jack Schneider of the 2020 book "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door." "The reason they have those state commissions — and often it was Democrats who set them up — is to get around public opinion," Berkshire said. Having early on run into local opposition, charter school advocates realized that as long as local communities had the ability to block their efforts, "they couldn't scale up fast enough. So in all those states, they set up these state-level entities that were meant to be a workaround so the people couldn't block them. So it's not just that Bill Lee has it stacked; it's that they were intended to thwart public opinion."

"All the chaos we're seeing around public schools right now is part of the privatization push," says Amy Frogge. "To market new 'solutions' for schools, privatizers have to create doubt and fear around public schools."

What's also by design is the larger cultural and political context that's driving demand for Hillsdale charters and similar projects, says Amy Frogge, a former member of the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Education in Tennessee and executive director of the public-school advocacy organization Pastors for Tennessee Children. "All the chaos we're seeing around public schools right now" — from panics around "critical race theory" to supposed "grooming" — "is part of the privatization push," said Frogge. "In order to market new 'solutions' for schools, which are always for-profit solutions, privatizers have to create doubt and fear around public schools."

Johnson also notes that many of the same Republicans who have condemned Arnn, or criticized Lee for not confronting him, also voted to create the charter commission in the first place, including Rep. Mark White, the House education chair who declared Hillsdale's plans "shattered."

"It's really not up to [White] and a legislative body at this point," said Johnson. "It's up to that charter commission that he voted to create."

Other education advocates warn that Hillsdale's charters are just one aspect of a much larger move toward school privatization. Tennessee is also in the process of crafting a new school funding scheme, called TISA (Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement), which has been supported by national "school choice" groups like Jeb Bush's Chiefs for Change. It proposes creating different levels of student funding based on various categories: With a base rate of just under $7,000 per student, individual funding would increase based on where a student lives, their family income, whether they have learning disabilities and so on.

Given that this formula is set to go into effect in 2023, Spears and others have speculated that it may have implications for vouchers and the expansion of private schools and charters. Following the pattern of pretty much all "school choice" plans, that also means it would have implications for public schools, which could lose even more money to cover their basic operating expenses.

"A lot of the same people who claim to be very worked up about the Hillsdale thing are very gung-ho about changing the school funding system to make it more 'backpack-ish,'" said Berkshire. That's a reference to the common "school choice" metaphor that school funding should be attached to students rather than schools, with children carrying a figurative "backpack" of public funding that goes with them whether they attend public school or not.

Tennessee education writer TC Weber argues that the state's funding plan is based on, "the ability to identify just how much investment each child is worth. Something that is important to virtually nobody unless they are looking to siphon off some public dollars into private bank accounts."

Amid this larger plan, Weber told Salon, the Hillsdale scandal seems almost like a sideshow. "Where the real danger lies is that this governor has been very, very good at shifting public money into private pockets," said Weber. "While we were all screaming over Hillsdale, they quietly passed the rules for TISA."

"That's the frustrating piece" about the Hillsdale backlash, Spears said. "You have all this rhetoric that says, 'We support our local schools.' 'The governor should have done more.' The reality is they're not doing anything to stop this," he continued. "They voted for a privatization funding formula. They didn't stop the Hillsdale contract. They're not calling a special session to cancel the charter commission or Hillsdale. To me, as long as you have a state charter commission 100% appointed by this governor and you're out there screaming, you might as well be screaming into the void. They're saying things to keep their voters placated in an election year."

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Indeed, election-year dynamics have already been shaped by some of these questions. Ahead of Tennessee's Aug. 4 primary elections, pro-charter and pro-voucher political action groups got heavily involved in Republican races, funding opponents of incumbents who have fought "school choice." That led to the defeat of two incumbent Republican lawmakers, state Sen. Bob Ramsey and state Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver. While Ramsey is known as a moderate, Weaver, who was present at the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, most certainly is not. But both had flouted privatization initiatives — by opposing vouchers or the state charter commission, or voting to reduce the governor's control over the state board of education — and that marked them as targets.

After his defeat, Ramsey told the Tennessean that, "Sending your kids to private school on public money has been the holy grail since integration for conservatives." In his subsequent interview with Tennessee Holler, Ramsey added that he saw his opponent's campaign slogan, "Fund students, not schools" as "a good capsule of what the intent is": to "do away with" public education.

"There is an effort to define school choice as a litmus test on the right, akin to abortion," said Berkshire. "They have decided they're willing to buck their own constituents, namely rural residents and lawmakers, in order to push this stuff through. So you're starting to see, in state after state, what happened to Ramsey." In practice, that means major school privatization donors, such as Betsy DeVos' American Federation of Children, flooding local races with money in order to "knock out the public school Republicans."

Spears agreed, comparing it to the lock the NRA has over the GOP. "That became part of the Republican Party platform: You could not oppose the NRA, period. Now, 10 years later, we have this privatization agenda and it's the same thing. If you are on the wrong side of privatization, they are going to come after you."

Yet the backlash against Hillsdale following Arnn's disparaging remarks may still hold some promise.

"There is an effort to define school choice as a litmus test on the right, akin to abortion," says Jennifer Berkshire. Privatization donors are flooding local races with money to "knock out the public school Republicans."

Berkshire said she was surprised by the ferocity of the backlash — "Why did it set off such a firestorm, considering that schools of education have been such reliable punching bags?" After all, she said, in Florida, Ron DeSantis has effectively been making the same argument for weeks, declaring that there's no need for teacher certification. Earlier this summer, Arizona decreed the state's teachers don't even need a college degree.

Part of the explanation for the backlash may be the expansion of the "school choice" movement beyond its customary targets in urban communities, where privatization efforts have long been wrapped in gauzy rhetoric about helping minority students, but where the fallout from their implementation remains safely distant from suburban and rural schools.

"The campaign to blow up the school system starts to run into the reality that a lot of places that are really red see the schools as an extension of their own communities," said Berkshire. Many of the tactics currently used to foster demand for school privatization — like panics about CRT or "grooming" — "are a harder sell" when the teachers are family or friends.

Indeed, as Marta Aldrich of Chalkbeat Tennessee noted last week, all three of the counties that rejected Hillsdale's American Classical Academy schools are suburban districts with no other charters. And, Spears adds, they're largely conservative communities whose school board members "are a far cry from the 'woke left,'" but still don't want what Hillsdale's offering.

Ramsey acknowledged as much, telling the Tennessee Holler that his own district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight off another charter proposal eight years ago. When the Holler's editor-in-chief, Justin Kanew, pointed out an obvious discrepancy — that Republicans who have championed charters for Tennessee's cities clearly don't want them for their own kids — Ramsey said he was right. He recalled how Tennesseans from districts with charters "would come to me and say, 'Hey, I hope you guys do have some charter schools and put them in your district, and then you can see what a mess it's caused in our districts.'"

Spears fears that might be exactly what it takes. There's a chance, he said, that the backlash might be enough to help Democratic — and pro-public education — candidates regain ground in Tennessee. Gubernatorial nominee Jason Martin is certainly trying. This past week he responded to Hillsdale's mailers with his own campaign messages, that "we all know what [Larry Arnn] said and how he meant it" and vowing that, if elected, he would cancel Hillsdale's contract.

Defeated Republican Bob Ramsey says people come up to him and say, "Hey, I hope you guys do have some charter schools in your district, and then you can see what a mess it's caused in ours."

But Spears also admits that the Hillsdale charters will probably open: "I think a lot of the road has been paved already." In the long run, he foresees Tennessee looking "a lot like Florida," with its mix of charters and voucher programs and relentless attacks on public school funding. But the effects may not become apparent for several years — long after this November's election.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, local schools are going to have to see a charter open in their district and see what that looks like before they really understand what that means. What it does to your budget, what it does to your tax base," Spears continued. "When local voters see this happen, they're going to be surprised, and not in a good way. "

Rep. Johnson has slightly more hope. "What it's going to take is a whole lot of Tennesseans rising up and saying, 'We love our public schools. We don't want these charters by people who don't understand the training necessary to educate kids,'" she said. "If people speak out enough, if these guys have a clue, they won't approve these charters. Because no matter how they try to connect, charters and vouchers are not popular in this state.

Frogge says that, after 10 years of advocating on behalf of a public school system besieged by all sides, she and other public education advocates are exhausted, but cautiously optimistic about what the Hillsdale scandal has wrought.

"Dr. Arnn's remarks gave us a very clear view of what privatizers really think about our public schools and public teachers," said Frogge. "His remarks were so radical and demeaning that he opened a lot of eyes."

As other areas of the state are affected by pressure to accept charter schools or voucher schemes, she imagines "there will be increasing resistance to efforts to privatize," and growing awareness of how the "privatization playbook" operates to undermine public schools and justify radical "solutions."

"Voters should understand that we're just taking steps in this playbook, with the ultimate goal of dismantling public education," Frogge said, warning that, once privatization efforts go too far, "it's very difficult to reverse course." The expansion of that threat to new, more rural and conservative areas, she said, has the capacity "to change the narrative. I hope it's in time to make a difference."