CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M FALLOUT
FTX collapse shakes up Chicago crypto market, where its US trading platform was going to be the next big thing


Robert Channick, Chicago Tribune
Mon, December 12, 2022

When the FTX.US headquarters opened in a gleaming new Fulton Market tower in May, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her retinue stopped by to officially welcome the cryptocurrency exchange to Chicago, a city positioning itself as a financial center for the booming digital assets.

It was supposed to be the start of something big.

The Chicago office was christened as the inaugural home to the U.S. trading platform for Bahamas-based FTX, a startup that had rocketed into a $32 billion global cryptocurrency exchange and the poster child for Bitcoin bravado. Six months later, FTX imploded in a massive bankruptcy and Chicago’s would-be crypto flagship was just another empty office.

“There’s no way to spin that this was good for the industry,” said Ben Weiss, 27, CEO of CoinFlip, a Chicago-based Bitcoin ATM operator and one of the city’s leading crypto companies.

The unfolding story of FTX’s precipitous downfall and alleged misuse of customer funds has shaken the nascent cryptocurrency industry to its digital asset core. The Chicago chapter is more about what didn’t happen.

FTX was launched in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried, a mop-haired millennial who parlayed an MIT degree and a brief run on Wall Street into one of the largest global cryptocurrency exchanges. Based offshore, FTX was able to bypass U.S. futures restrictions and offer a range of leveraged derivatives, generating huge trading volume amid volatile crypto price swings.

Bankman-Fried also marketed FTX into the mainstream with stadium naming rights deals, advertising campaigns and a high-profile Washington, D.C., lobbying effort. FTX made a splash with a Super Bowl TV commercial in February urging viewers: Don’t be like comedian Larry David, who dismissed crypto as the next big thing.

“I don’t think so,” said David, ostensibly playing the fool.

But FTX unraveled quickly when a run on deposits and cratering crypto prices left it with an $8 billion shortfall, forcing Bankman-Fried to resign and the firm to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Nov. 11. Investor assets were frozen and regulators are investigating whether FTX improperly used customer funds to cover losing positions at co-owned trading firm Alameda Research.

On Monday, Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried after federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York filed criminal charges.

FTX generated $3.45 trillion in global trading volume this year, while FTX.US hit $65 billion before both exchanges came to a mandated halt in November, according to Nomics, a leading cryptocurrency index.

A U.S.-regulated exchange, FTX.US offered fewer products than the global exchange, but was the only FTX platform licensed for American investors to trade crypto. Daily trading volume on FTX.US ramped up sixfold this year, while registered users grew from 10,000 to about 1.5 million, according to a source familiar with the operation.

The U.S.-based platform was not part of the massive liquidity crunch that brought down the global FTX exchange, according to Bankman-Fried.

“To my knowledge, that’s fully solvent; that’s fully funded,” Bankman-Fried said in a Nov. 30 video interview with The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “I believe that withdrawals could be opened up today, and everyone could be made whole from that and none of these problems plague the U.S. platform.”

Launched in January 2021, FTX.US established Chicago as its headquarters in June of that year, setting up shop in temporary offices after Brett Harrison, a former software developer at Citadel Securities, was named inaugural president of the fledgling U.S. crypto exchange.

The permanent Chicago headquarters officially opened May 10, 2022, at 167 Green Street, a new 17-story Fulton Market office building, with Lightfoot and other Chicago officials on hand to cut the ribbon. FTX.US said it would fill out the 9,000-square-foot space on the 11th floor with 70 employees, but the larger promise was to boost Chicago’s standing as a crypto commerce center.

The company also pledged $1 million to launch a charitable initiative for Black Chicagoans in underserved neighborhoods.

The promises were broken Sept. 27, when Bankman-Fried made two surprise announcements in an email to employees: Harrison was leaving the company and FTX.US was moving from Chicago to Miami — four months after the Fulton Market grand opening.

The announcement came as a shock to about two dozen Chicago-based employees at FTX.US, whose jobs were essentially shifted to move it or lose it mode.

“I think a lot of people were blindsided at FTX, partners of FTX, people in the industry,” said Paul Hsu, 47, founder and CEO of Decasonic, a Chicago-based venture capital fund focused on blockchain innovation — the backbone of cryptocurrency technology.

Decasonic was based until recently in the same building where FTX.US was located, and Hsu spoke at the opening of the crypto exchange office in May.

Harrison, 34, who previously worked with Bankman-Fried at New York trading firm Jane Street, declined to comment.

While Bankman-Fried invited Harrison to head the U.S. trading platform, the lack of a formal management structure at FTX and a resistance to allowing the Chicago office to staff up ultimately fractured the working relationship, sources said.

Sources said Harrison’s departure from FTX.US was months in the works, with plans to start his own Chicago-based crypto firm.

When the Chicago office closed at the end of October, several employees had already moved to Miami, where the new FTX.US offices were set to open, a short hop from the parent company’s Bahamian enclave. FTX had established a high-profile presence in Miami, with its logo emblazoned on the NBA Heat’s arena through a 19-year naming-rights deal.

But a number of FTX.US employees were reluctant to take their talents to Miami, dragging their feet and exploring outside job opportunities, sources said. Within days, FTX would collapse, leaving a handful of early Chicago movers in Miami and out of a job.

“We have our portfolio companies looking through FTX.US alumni,” Hsu said. “We’ve seen some resumes come in for our job roles at Decasonic.”

The Miami move and subsequent bankruptcy also left the FTX.US charitable initiative with Equity and Transformation, a 12-month pilot program to give $500 per month to 100 formerly incarcerated Chicagoans in underserved neighborhoods, only partially funded and unable to launch this fall as planned.

Richard Wallace, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Chicago-based Equity and Transformation, did not respond to a request for comment, but the city said it is trying to find a new funding source.

“While the City currently has no role in the administration or funding of EAT’s program, with the news of FTX’s bankruptcy filing, the City is supporting EAT’s efforts to secure alternate funding for this important program so they can serve the returning residents who were selected to participate,” Kate Lefurgy, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, said in a statement.

With little regulation and no backing other than the faith of its fervent believers, cryptocurrency has taken investors on a wild ride during the pandemic.

Launched in 2009 by anonymous computer developers, Bitcoin operates on a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network. While there is no central bank, the encrypted digital transactions are verified by blockchain technology, a type of database that forms a permanent ledger of all transactions across the shared computer network.

The price of Bitcoin, which reached nearly $69,000 in November 2021, has fallen by 75%, hovering around $17,000 amid what industry analysts are calling a crypto winter, fomenting skepticism among some investors that digital assets have any intrinsic value.

Bitcoin remains the most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of about $330 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, a price-tracking website for cryptoassets. Other major cryptocurrencies include Ethereum and Dogecoin, which was started in 2013 by a pair of software engineers as a joke, and now boasts a market cap of nearly $12 billion.

The total cryptocurrency market cap, which topped $2.8 trillion in November 2021, has fallen to about $850 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

In 2022, World Business Chicago, the city’s economic development arm, made the fintech industry, including crypto, an area of focus. Last year, investment in Chicago’s fintech ecosystem more than doubled to nearly $4.6 billion, according to March research report issued by the agency.

Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago and the city’s chief marketing officer, who was on hand for the May ribbon-cutting at the new FTX.US offices, downplayed the role of the startup exchange in the city’s larger fintech aspirations.

“We didn’t even mention FTX in our research overview,” Fassnacht said in a statement. “We continue to believe that the broader fintech sector has a bright future in Chicagoland.”

At the state level, a bill that would create a special purpose depository trust for digital assets, providing a regulatory framework for banks and other custodial institutions to hold cryptocurrency accounts for clients, passed the House in April 2021, but stalled in the Senate last fall.

While the city has all but scrubbed FTX from its corporate memory, leading Chicago crypto players are still assessing the fallout from its demise.

The CME broke new ground when it began trading Bitcoin futures in 2017. Despite the crypto winter, the CME has seen an increased interest in trading crypto this year, with average daily volume up 17% over 2021. Some industry analysts believe the CME, one of the world’s largest futures exchanges, may see higher trading volume as investors migrate to a more established platform following the FTX implosion.

Terry Duffy, CME chairman and CEO, said the future of Bitcoin futures remains to be seen.

“Crypto markets are at a critical juncture,” Duffy said in a statement. “While we have seen several positive applications of technologies like blockchain, cryptocurrencies, as an asset class, still need to show their use case beyond just speculative tools. That said, crypto markets continue to have proponents who believe in the idea and the value of digital currencies. Exactly how these markets will continue to develop is yet to be seen.”

Bobby Zagotta, the Chicago-based CEO of Bitstamp USA, a rival cryptocurrency exchange, said FTX brought a lot of new investors into digital assets, but its collapse has set the industry back two years in terms of building trust with the investing public.

A former Kraken executive who previously helped launch Bitcoin futures trading at CME in 2017, Zagotta said more regulations are needed for the crypto industry. For Chicago, the “trading capital of the world,” Zagotta said other companies will be beneficiaries of a “smarter marketplace” in the wake of FTX’s demise.

“In the last two to three years, Chicago has really put itself on the map in terms of being an innovation hub, not just around blockchain or crypto, but around technology in general,” Zagotta said. “We’re all having to kind of reset and be very smart and deliberate about how we build our business from this very public fraud and flameout.”

Founded in 2015, CoinFlip moved into the Old Post Office last year and has about 260 Chicago-area employees. The fast-growing company has flourished during the crypto winter, and is projected to generate $150 million in revenue this year — a 67% increase — through its network of more than 4,000 Bitcoin ATMs across 49 states and Canada, which change cash into Bitcoin.

“It’s usually not bad for us when there’s uncertainty there because you might have more people cashing out, you might have more people going in,” said Weiss, a Deerfield native. “Volatility typically leads to more transactions.”

The collapse at FTX may also benefit the CoinFlip business model, which doesn’t hold customer funds. Weiss advocates “self-custody” of cryptocurrencies in a digital wallet, although there are security risks associated with that as well.

Gina Pieters, an economics lecturer at the University of Chicago and an expert on crypto assets, visited the FTX.US office and met with employees during its brief run in Chicago.

Most people outside the Chicago crypto community, she said, probably didn’t know the FTX.US office was ever based in the city before it abruptly took off for Miami, and its subsequent destination, bankruptcy.

While the FTX.US office was small and short-lived, its sudden demise will nonetheless negatively impact Chicago’s crypto ecosystem, Pieters said.

“I think it’s really hard to disentangle the FTX office in Chicago declaring bankruptcy and the broader implications that has for the city, given that the crypto industry is going to be muted for a while,” she said. “It will be a continuation of the crypto winter.”

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M 

WHO'S THAT GIRL?!

Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail, but legal watchers are wondering: Where's ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison?

Sindhu Sundar,Lakshmi Varanasi
Fri, December 16, 2022 

Caroline Ellison hasn't been heard from in public since Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas.MARIO DUNCANSON / Contributor/ Getty Images/ Caroline Ellison's Twitter

Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison isn't named in prosecutors' charges against Sam Bankman-Fried


But the SEC's civil suit references her statements on the relationship between FTX and Alameda.


Conspiracy charges and civil claims against SBF show others in the crosshairs, legal experts said.

As Sam Bankman-Fried was taken away in handcuffs, some people who have been watching the implosion of FTX are wondering: Where's Caroline Ellison, his onetime girlfriend who ran his crypto hedge fund Alameda Research?

So far, legal watchers say US prosecutors and regulators have been tight-lipped: The criminal indictment made no mention of Ellison, and the SEC's civil complaint targeted just Bankman-Fried.


But in investigating what US Attorney Damian Williams called "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history," the government is almost certainly looking beyond Bankman-Fried, legal experts said.

"It would not surprise me if Ellison has already spoken with prosecutors," said Renato Mariotti, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, and a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. "And given the situation she's in, she has to be at least considering that move."

No charges or government complaints have been brought against Ellison so far. But her rise as CEO at Alameda, Bankman-Fried's other crypto company separate from FTX, may certainly put her in investigators' sights.

The SEC outlined her tenure at Alameda since she joined in 2018, citing news reports that quoted her as claiming FTX and Alameda were "at arm's length," but then telling Alameda employees last month that the firm's leadership knew it took FTX funds, a detail reported in The Wall Street Journal at the time.

The SEC's complaint on Tuesday claimed that Bankman-Fried "remained the ultimate decision-maker" at Alameda, even after Ellison took over the reins.

US Attorney Damian Williams, who heads the federal prosecutors' office in Manhattan that charged Bankman-Fried, told reporters on Tuesday that investigators are still on the case. Depending on what they uncover, the agency can bring new charges and target other defendants.

There are signs that's coming — the conspiracy counts against Bankman-Fried show that a grand jury already found that prosecutors showed evidence that at least two people agreed to participate in an alleged criminal scheme. Though the indictment offers few insights beyond Bankman-Fried's role, that's not unusual during an ongoing investigation, said Rebecca Mermelstein, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers LLP.
Cooperating witnesses?

It's unclear what kind of charges, if any, Ellison herself may be facing. The conspiracy counts against Bankman-Fried suggest that federal prosecutors may be pursuing others whom they consider to be potential co-conspirators, particularly on counts against him like conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Those who fear being caught in the government's snare may often cooperate as witnesses in the investigation in hopes of securing some kind of leniency, said Anil Mujumdar, a professor at the University of Alabama school of law, and a former white collar defense attorney.

"Typically, people in her position — if they are aware of misconduct, or even if they may have participated — they can help the government make the case against another defendant by trying to engage in early plea negotiations, and exchange information in return for a potentially lighter sentence," Mujumdar said.

An attorney for Ellison, Stephanie Avakian of the law firm WilmerHale, did not respond to Insider's request for comment Wednesday on the charges against Bankman-Fried, or Ellison's current whereabouts. Until recently, she was living in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas with Bankman-Fried, and eight other members of his inner circle, according to a report in CoinDesk.

Sam Bankman-Fried joined a New York Times conference by video link before his arrest.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Since Bankman-Fried's crypto empire began unraveling in November however, Ellison has stayed away from the public eye.

That Ellison is being talked about in stories about a large potential fraud is a jarring turn of events for someone who was once vice president of Stanford's Effective Altruism club, where she set her sights on understanding how to allocate money for the betterment of the world.

In fact, she and Bankman-Fried initially bonded over their interest in so-called effective altruism when they first met as colleagues at the trading firm Jane Street Capital. Both had also been raised by university professors. While Bankman-Fried's parents were professors at Stanford Law School, Ellison's were economists based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Once Bankman-Fried had designs on launching his own crypto trading firm, he convinced Ellison to come on board. Ellison was one of his few female colleagues and the two eventually entered into a polyamorous relationship with others in his inner business circle, according to a CoinDesk article that relied on anonymous sources. Bankman-Fried has said he dated Ellison for about six months, but denied having a polyamorous relationship.

Ellison largely remained in the shadow of Bankman-Fried, but officially took over as CEO of Alameda Research in April 2022 after her colleague Sam Trabucco stepped down.

Alameda ex-CEO Caroline Ellison taps SEC's former top crypto regulator as lawyer in FTX investigation


Bethany Biron
Sat, December 10, 2022 

Caroline Ellison, left, and Stephanie Avakian, right.Twitter/@carolinecapital, WilmerHale

Caroline Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian and law firm WilmerHale to represent her in the FTX investigation, per Bloomberg.


Avakian was a top regulator at the SEC, where she increased oversight of cryptocurrency.


She also led major cases against companies including Tesla, Theranos, Facebook, and Wells Fargo, among others.

Alameda Research ex-CEO Caroline Ellison has retained a former top cryptocurrency regulator for the US Securities and Exchange Commission as the federal investigation into the downfall of FTX continues.

Bloomberg first reported that Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian, chair of the securities and financial services department at law firm WilmerHale and the SEC's former enforcement director. Sources close to the matter told Bloomberg that Avakian, as well as fellow WilmerHale lawyers, will represent Ellison.

During her tenure at the SEC from 2016 to 2022, Akavian led a team that worked on several high-profile cases against major companies and notable figures. They include Elizabeth Holmes for making fraudlent claims to investors to raise $700 million for Theranos, Elon Musk for tweeting misleading statements about a plan to take Tesla private, and Facebook for misleading investors about the risks of misusing user data.

Akavian was also instrumental in increasing cryptocurrency regulation while at the SEC, leading cases against companies like Robinhood and Ripple Lab.

Avakian and WilmerHale will represent Ellison during the federal probe into her former company, Alameda Research, the trading firm and corporate sibling of fallen cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.

Prior to FTX filing for bankruptcy in November, Alameda borrowed $3.3 billion worth of funds from the cryptocurrency exchange and lent them to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and companies he controlled to cover losses and make risky bets, according to court documents.

Ellison has remained an elusive figure in the collapse of FTX, staying mum and largely unreachable during its downfall. As noted by Bloomberg, while Bankman-Fried has publicly placed blame on Alameda in numerous interviews, Ellison has stayed silent. Some have speculated she may be cutting a deal and cooperating with authorities, according to New York magazine.

The Senate Banking Committee said earlier this week that if Bankman-Fried does not appear before lawmakers next week to testify, he will be subpoenaed.

"As the Founder and CEO of FTX Trading Ltd. at the time of its collapse and the founder, principal owner, and former CEO of Alameda Research, you must answer for the failure of both entities that was caused, at least in part, by the clear misuse of client funds and wiped out billions of dollars owed to over a million creditors," Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brow, said in a public statement to the former billionaire on Tuesday.

The Block CEO resigns after reports of undisclosed loans from Alameda Research

Lachlan Keller
Sun, December 11, 2022 


Michael McCaffrey, the chief executive officer of cryptocurrency news outlet The Block, resigned after media website Axios reported early Saturday, Hong Kong time, that he had received three undisclosed multi-million dollar loans from Alameda Research, the brokerage arm of failed digital assets exchange FTX.com.

See related article: Disgraced FTX founder SBF to speak at New York Times Dealbook Summit despite controversy

Fast facts

The company’s chief revenue officer, Bobby Moran, will lead the company following McCaffrey’s departure, according to a statement released Saturday.

Moran said that no one outside of McCaffery knew of the three loans totaling US$43 million from February 2021.

McCaffrey’s limited liability company, MJMCCAFFREY LLC, took the first loan of US$12 million from Alameda in 2021 to buy out investors. He chose not to disclose the loan in fear of compromising the news outlet’s objectivity in covering FTX, he claimed in a Twitter thread shortly after the revelation, confirming Axios’ report.

The second loan, worth US$15 million, helped fund day-to-day operations, while a US$16 million third loan was used to buy personal property in the Bahamas, where FTX is based, McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey has also stepped down as the company’s sole board member, which is expanding to three people.

The Block hopes to buy out McCaffrey’s majority stake in the company as part of its restructuring.

Since FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, its collapse has led to market contagion spreading in the cryptocurrency industry.

See related article: SBF’s parents, FTX executives bought Bahamas property worth US$121 million: Reuters

NO PASARAN!

Spain exhumes 53 bodies from Franco dictatorship's shallow graves


Aranzadi Science Society gathers remains of prisoners who died in a Francoist prison in the Basque town of Orduna

Mon, December 12, 2022 
By Vincent West

ORDUNA, Spain (Reuters) - Forensic archaeologists have exhumed 53 bodies from shallow graves in the Basque town of Orduna that were dug in 1941, as part of a process of healing the country's wounds from the Franco dictatorship era.

The investigators will try to identify the remains and return them to relatives so that they can be formally buried, Spanish pathologist Francisco Etxeberria told Reuters on Sunday.

More than 500,000 people were killed during the 1936-1939 Spanish civil war. Historians estimate more than 100,000 people remain missing, many in unmarked mass graves.

The leftist coalition government approved a bill in 2020 to finance exhumations from the unmarked graves as part of a wider effort to find out the truth about the dictatorship's crimes and heal wounds still open four decades after Franco's death.

Naiara Garmendia said she understood her family, especially her late grandfather, better after finding out what had happened in the early 1940s to her great-grandfather, Bernardo Rodriguez, a UGT union member from Extremadura, who died in Orduna.

"He can't be here, he doesn't have this peace, he won’t know where his father was. But in some way, we can give it to him,” she told Reuters about her late grandfather.

The historical documentation on the graves and testimony suggest that the human remains belong to prisoners who died between February and June 1941 at the Central Prison of Orduna, the Basque regional government said in a statement.

They estimate that at least 225 people died in what was first a concentration camp during the civil war between 1937 and 1939, then a prison between 1939 and 1941.

Etxeberria explained these were republican prisoners who were jailed in terrible conditions under Franco's regime.

"They died of hunger, lack of clothing, sometimes from diseases such as tuberculosis," he said.

"We are dealing with victims of Franco's repression."

A team of forensics experts will gather the remains buried at the local cemetery, near the old prison, and will send them to laboratories for DNA tests.

Relatives will receive the remains once they have been identified.

This exhumation is part of Gogora (Remembrance), the Basque Government's "Search for missing persons from the Civil War" programme, in conjunction with the Aranzadi Science Society and collaboration from Orduna's local government.

(Reporting by Vincent West, Writing by Elena Rodriguez and Inti Landauro, Editing by Nick Macfie)

A sneaky photo taken the last time a stealth bomber was unveiled shows why some parts of the new B-21 are still under wraps

Michael Peck
Sun, December 11, 2022 

People watch a B-2 taxi on the runaway for its maiden flight in Palmdale, California on July 17, 1989.Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images

On December 2, the US Air Force revealed its new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider.

Security was strict, with officials tightly controlling how much of the bomber was visible.

That may have been an effort to avoid what happened the last time a stealth bomber was unveiled.

Security was tight when the US Air Force unveiled its new B-21 Raider stealth bomber on December 2.

Journalists and spectators could only glimpse the front of the aircraft from a distance, which made its details appear indistinct. But more interesting was that the event wasn't held in the open air on a runway.

Instead, the rollout took place after sunset at Northrop Grumman's plant in Palmdale, California, with the bomber partially inside a hangar. One reason for that may be what happened the last time the Air Force unveiled a stealth bomber.

On November 22, 1988, as armed guards patrolled the tarmac and a Huey helicopter circled overhead, the world got a chance to see the B-2 Spirit — the predecessor of the B-21 in look and function — at the same Palmdale facility.

As with the B-21, spectators were kept at a distance, and only the front of the B-2 could be seen. That was frustrating for those who wanted to see the rear of the B-2, especially the distinctive trailing edges and engine exhausts of the tailless flying-wing bomber, which would give clues to the aircraft's capabilities and its stealthiness.

Despite the Pentagon's efforts to limit how much of the B-2 could be seen, the bomber's unique features were soon visible to the world through a series of events worthy of a spy novel or a screwball comedy.

'Why should they care?'

In a feat that made aviation journalism history, enterprising reporters and photographers from Aviation Week magazine managed to get an overhead glimpse of the B-2, taking advantage of oversights in the Pentagon's security measures.

"One of the driving functions to get us into this mode was, 'Hey, if they were going to pull this thing out of the hangar into the open, I can guarantee the Russians are going to have a satellite overhead,'" William Scott, a retired Aviation Week editor, said of the effort to get the photo.

"And if the powers that be don't care if the Russians see the trailing edge, why should they care about the American people?" Scott told Aviation Week in an article about the photo scoop published on the same day as the B-21's rollout.

The team considered several ideas, including flying a hot-air balloon over the B-2, which was dropped for safety reasons. Eventually they noticed that FAA's notice to airmen — an alert known as a NOTAM — didn't restrict flights in the area that were above 1,000 feet.

Aviation Week editor Michael Dornheim and photographer Bill Hartenstein flew a rented Cessna 172 to Palmdale Airport the weekend before the B-2 was unveiled.

"Dornheim performed several circuits and touch-and-gos to allay any potential suspicions from air traffic control, while Hartenstein tried out various telephoto lenses to guarantee he would have the best images of the day," Aviation Week senior editor Guy Norris wrote this month.

When the big day came, security kept the crowd at least 200 feet from the front of the aircraft, while the low-flying Huey helicopter kept a watchful eye for intruders. But the Cessna circled overhead, unnoticed, as Hartenstein took photo after photo.

When the plane landed, Dornheim and Hartenstein "were just giddy," Scott said. "They hadn't got hollered at in any way by ATC [air traffic control] and I told them I hadn't noticed anyone even looking up!"

The team then raced to meet Thanksgiving week deadlines. Hartenstein's film was dispatched on an overnight FedEx flight to New York and emerged in the pages of Aviation Week as a beautiful, full-color photo of the B-2 — its trailing edges and exhausts fully visible.

A US Air Force B-2 stealth bomber.Mai/Getty Images

A few days later, Scott got a call from Col. Richard Couch, director of the B-2 combined test force at Edwards Air Force Base. Couch said that some "civilians" were vowing that heads would roll over the leak. Couch said he told them "to get over it. We figured you guys at Aviation Week would do something like that anyway!"

Thirty-four years later, security at the B-21's ceremony was tight both on the ground and in the air.

Officials imposed "very, very strict camera regulations" and restricted reporters from bringing cameras and recording devices into certain areas, according to Aviation Week editor Brian Everstine, who covered the rollout.

In the risers where reporters were seated, "a very ornery security man" measured cameras and tripods to ensure they weren't taller than was allowed, Everstine said on Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast.

US officials did issue a NOTAM this time, closing the airspace above the event, not that it would've mattered. "They didn't even pull it totally out" of the hangar, Everstine said. "Even if there was anybody above, you wouldn't be able to see the trailing edge."
Secret, but not for long

A B-21 Raider under cover during a rehearsal for its unveiling ceremony at Plant 42 in Palmdale on December 1.US Air Force/Airman 1st Class Joshua M. Carroll

Is all this secrecy really necessary? Photographs can tell the enemy a lot about a weapon.

For stealth aircraft in particular, which have surfaces and components that are carefully designed to minimize the radar waves they reflect, a certain degree of covertness is understandable.

On the other hand, for an aircraft to be properly tested, it has to leave the hangar and face public exposure.

The B-21's first flight is expected in mid-2023, and more photos of the aircraft are sure to emerge at that time, though program officials say they plan to keep the bomber's tail area under wraps as long as possible, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Of course, this assumes that foreign spies haven't already ferreted out the secrets.

The B-21 Raider after its unveiling on December 2.US Air Force

Beijing in particular is suspected of fueling its rapid military advancement with the widespread theft of intellectual property, including materials related to crucial hardware like aircraft engines.

In 2010, a former Northrop engineer was convicted for selling classified information — including details about the lock-on range for infrared missiles against the B-2 — to China.

In 2015, documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested that Chinese hackers had stolen plans for the F-35. China almost certainly used that stolen data for its J-21 and J-31 stealth fighters, which happen to resemble the F-35.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the B-21, it would not be surprising if China and Russia know more about the $700 million bomber than the US taxpayers who are funding it.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Trump, Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes pushing antisemitism to the forefront of the GOP could pull the Christian nationalist movement apart

Kelsey Vlamis

Sun, December 11, 2022 

Nick Fuentes; Kanye West; Marjorie Taylor Greene

• Kanye West and Nick Fuentes' recent antisemitic comments have sparked widespread outrage.

• But they also exposed a darker side of Christian nationalism that was always there, experts say.

• The shift could hinder the recent resurgence of Christian nationalism in mainstream politics.

Former President Donald Trump's meeting with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes helped shine a spotlight on antisemitism that some on the right have tried to ignore — and could hinder the growing mainstream influence of Christian nationalism.

"The Christian nationalism label was already generating a lot of debate amongst conservative Christians in the United States. Now you throw antisemitism into the mix, and I think that creates yet another set of divisions," Philip Gorski, a sociologist at Yale University and the co-author of "The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy," told Insider.

Trump met with Ye and Fuentes — a white supremacist and Christian nationalist known for sharing racist and antisemitic views — at Mar-a-Lago on November 22. The former president later denied knowing anything about Fuentes, but weeks before the meeting Ye had also received criticism for his own antisemitic comments, including saying he was going to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."

Ye's antisemitism continued, boosted by the notoriety of the meeting with Trump. On December 1, the rapper appeared with Fuentes on Alex Jones' Infowars show, during which he praised Adolf Hitler and downplayed the Holocaust.

Ye working with Fuentes and meeting with Trump — and the way he's previously been embraced by others on the right, from Fox News' Tucker Carlson to GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee — have forced some conservatives and Christian nationalists to reckon with a side of the movement they have preferred to pretend wasn't there.

Christian nationalism and white supremacy

Gorski said he and other scholars of Christian nationalism have been saying for a long time that the ideology was tangled up with white supremacism, but they received a lot of pushback for it. "People saying, 'It's not true. I don't know anybody who's like that. I don't know anybody who thinks that,'" Gorski explained.

The recent scandals with Ye and Fuentes have "just brought some of that deeper, uglier stuff up to the surface and into broad daylight, but it was there the whole time."

Christian nationalism can generally be distilled down to the belief that Christianity and the US are intrinsically linked and that the religion should have a privileged position in American society. Americans who support Christian nationalist ideas may not identify as Christian nationalists. They also might embrace some aspects of the ideology but not others, so there's a wide spectrum of Christians who could be considered part of the movement.

"White Christian nationalism is older than the United States itself and it goes back to really the 17th century," Gorski explained, adding that the concept "in many ways emerged as a way of justifying stealing Native lands and killing Indigenous people, and enslaving kidnapped Africans."

Today there are still many Christian nationalists who, when talking about good Americans, are thinking of people who look and think like them, he said: "That means, first and foremost, conservative white Christians."

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at IUPUI and co-author of "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States," has found similar connections between Christian nationalism and antisemitism.

"In our book, we show that Americans who embrace Christian nationalism more strongly are more likely to agree that 'Jews hold values that are morally inferior to me,' 'Jews want to limit the personal freedoms of people like me,' and 'Jews endanger the physical safety of people like me,'" Whitehead told Insider.

Additional research has also found close connections between Christian nationalism, antisemitism, QAnon followers, and supporters of Trump. And a how-to guide to Christian nationalism published in September by Gab Founder Andrew Torba was rife with antisemitism.

The Christian right divided

Despite the connection, Gorski said Christian nationalists would likely have "pretty complicated reactions" to the Ye and Fuentes situation "because they have a pretty complicated relationship to Israel and Judaism and American Jews."

Gorski said there is much less blatant antisemitism among conservative Christians in the US than there was in the mid-20th century. He said it's hard to quantify, but he believes the average "garden variety Christian nationalists are probably not explicitly or consciously antisemitic," even though there's a "hardcore faction" that is.

The American right has also been closely linked to support of Israel in recent decades, in part due to what Gorski described as an expansion pack for Christian nationalism: Christian Zionism — which refers to a belief among some Christians that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.

A LifeWay poll conducted in 2017 found that 80 percent of evangelical Christians, a group that is more likely to embrace Christian nationalism, believed the creation of Israel was part of the fulfillment of a prophecy in the Bible that would lead to the return of Christ. The survey respondents were also overwhelmingly politically conservative.

Gorski noted there is also a sentiment among some conservative Christians that differentiates between Jewish people by location, describing the thinking as: "Jews' real homeland is Israel, so a good Jew is in Israel, so an American Jew is not a good Jew." Under this strange logic, a Christian Zionist could be considered a better Jew than a Jew, he explained, noting a comment made in October by the wife of Doug Mastriano, the failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate. When addressing accusations of antisemitism against her husband, Rebecca Mastriano said "we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do."

The divide among Christian nationalists when it comes to Jewish people was on display when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia publicly criticized Fuentes, even though she herself has been accused of antisemitism and even appeared at an event with him earlier this year.

Greene is one of the few prominent Republicans — and only member of Congress — to openly identify as a Christian nationalist. But following the Alex Jones appearance, she publicly denounced Fuentes and his "racist" and "antisemitic" ideology. She also called him "racist" and "immature" on her show and said it "makes no sense" for Ye to align with him.

Fuentes responded by attacking her character: "She wants to be the face of Christian nationalism. She's divorced, and she's actively an adulterer," he said, referencing rumors. "How are you going to be the face of Christian nationalism when you're a divorced woman girlboss?"

Saying the quiet part out loud could hurt the Christian nationalism movement

Greene's rejection of Fuentes was also notable, as it forced her to confront a side of Christian nationalism that she had previously refused to acknowledge.

In addition to self-identifying with the term, she's become a major proponent of its ideals. Greene has said the GOP should be the party of Christian nationalism and even sells merch adorned with the term. She has also tried to dismiss criticism of the movement as coming from the "godless left" who hate both the US and God, and has ignored those who have pointed out the documented connections between Christian nationalism and white supremacy.

But Fuentes and Ye, empowered by a high-profile meeting with the former president, have made those connections much harder to ignore — and could help deter conservative Christians who may otherwise have been intrigued by the movement.

While Christian nationalism as a concept is still on the historical decline, its recent resurgence and influence in mainstream politics could be threatened if more far-right figures continue to shine a light on its ugliest parts.

Free ride: DC unveils bold plan to boost public transit



Public Transit Free Fares

The Washington DC government voted to waive fares for Metrobus rides within city limits starting July, 1, 2023, becoming the nation's most populous city to offer free public transit. 

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

HOPE YEN
Sun, December 11, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare for the District of Columbia and other major cities that public transit was a lifeline for essential workers and that even modest fares could be a burden to them. So the nation’s capital is introducing a groundbreaking plan: It will begin offering free bus fares to residents next summer.

Other cities, including Los Angeles and Kansas City, Missouri, suspended fare collection during the height of the pandemic to minimize human contact and ensure that residents with no other travel options could reach jobs and services at hospitals, grocery stores and offices.

But D.C.‘s permanent free fare plan will be by far the biggest, coming at a time when major cities including Boston and Denver and states such as Connecticut are considering broader zero-fare policies to improve equity and help regain ridership that was lost with the rise of remote and hybrid work. Los Angeles instituted free fares in 2020 before recently resuming charging riders. Lately LA Metro has been testing a fare-capping plan under which transit riders pay for trips until they hit a fixed dollar amount and then ride free after that, though new Mayor Karen Bass has suggested support for permanently abolishing the fares.

Analysts say D.C.’s free fare system offers a good test case on how public transit can be reshaped for a post-pandemic future.

“If D.C. demonstrates that it increases ridership, it reduces the cost burden for people who are lower income and it improves the quality of transit service in terms of speed of bus service, and reduces cars on the road, this could be a roaring success,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “We just don’t know yet whether that would happen.”

The $2 fares will be waived for riders boarding Metrobuses within the city limits beginning around July 1. In unanimously approving the plan last week, the D.C. Council also agreed to expand bus service to 24 hours on 12 major routes downtown, benefiting nightlife and service workers who typically had to rely on costly ride-share to get home after the Metro subway and bus system closed at night.

A new $10 million fund devoted to annual investments in D.C. bus lanes, shelters and other improvements was also approved to make rides faster and more reliable.

“The District is ready to be a national leader in the future of public transit,” said D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen, who first proposed free fares in 2019 and says the program can be fully paid-for with surplus D.C. tax revenue. Roughly 85% of bus riders are D.C. residents. The Metro system also serves neighboring suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.

About 68% of D.C. residents who take the bus have household incomes below $50,000, and riders are disproportionately Black and Latino compared with Metrorail passengers, according to the council's budget analysis.

Not everyone is a fan.

Peter Van Doren, a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Cato Institute, said the plan risks high costs and mixed results, noting that the opportunity to improve ridership may be limited because bus passengers have been quicker to return to near pre-pandemic levels. He said government subsidies to help lower-income people buy cars would go farther because not everyone has easy access to public transit, which operates on fixed routes.

"The beauty of automobiles is they can go anywhere and everywhere in a way that transit does not," he said. “We don’t know the subset of low-income people in D.C. where transit is a wonderful option as opposed to not such a wonderful option.”

The council's move, which will be finalized in a second vote later this month, came over the concerns of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who supports the concept of free fares but raised questions about the $42 million annual cost over the long term. “District residents and taxpayers will have to pay for this program,” she wrote in a letter to council members. “Our neighbors, Virginia and Maryland, should absorb some of these costs as their residents will benefit from this program as well.”

Allen also had proposed a $100 monthly transit benefit for D.C. residents to access the Metrorail system, but shelved the plan until at least fall 2024 due to the $150 million annual estimated cost. He described free bus fares as a “win-win-win” for the District because they will help the transit system recover and offer affordable, green-friendly travel while boosting economic activity downtown.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which currently faces a budget deficit of $185 million, part of which it attributes to fare evasion, praised the plan as “bold.” It said it looked forward to working with the city council, mayor and regional stakeholders “toward our goal of providing more accessible and equitable service for our customers.”

Nationwide, while transit ridership has returned to about 79% of pre-pandemic levels, that figure varies widely by region. In New York City, for instance, MTA chief executive Janno Lieber has suggested that city and state government step up to pay for trains and buses more like essential public services, such as a fire department, citing millions of transit riders he believes may never come back. In 2019, fares made up over 40% of total transit revenue there but have since slid to 25%, leading to an anticipated $2.5 billion deficit in 2025 along with the risk of soon using up the transportation authority's federal COVID relief funds.

In D.C., where bus fares amount to a modest 7% of total transit operating revenues, the transit agency may be able to more easily absorb losses from zero fares, said Art Guzzetti, the American Public Transportation Association’s vice president of mobility initiatives and public policy. He noted savings for city taxpayers from speeding up boarding, which could allow for more routes and stops, as well as reducing traffic congestion and eliminating the need for transit enforcement against fare evaders.

Currently, D.C. bus ridership stands at about 74% of pre-pandemic levels on weekdays compared to 40% for Metrorail.

Still, free fares can be a tough choice for cities. “If the consequence of a zero-fare program is you have less funds to invest in frequent service, then you’re going backwards,” Guzzetti said.

In Kansas City, which began offering zero-fares for its buses in March 2020 and has no planned end date, officials said the program has helped boost ridership, which has risen by 13% in 2022 so far compared with the previous year. The free fares amount to an $8 million revenue loss, with the city paying for more than half of that and federal COVID aid covering the rest through 2023, said Cindy Baker, interim vice president for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, who describes the program as a success.

The program has eliminated altercations between passengers and bus drivers over fares, although there have been more instances of passenger disputes due to an increase in homeless riders, according to the agency. Baker said the transit agency has been adding security in response to some rider complaints.

Ché Ruddell-Tabisola, director of government affairs for the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, cheered free fares as a much-needed economic boost, showing D.C.'s commitment to the well-being of late-night bartenders and restaurant workers needing an affordable way home.

“A lot of industries have moved on from the pandemic, but for D.C.'s bars and restaurants, the pandemic is still happening everyday,” he said, citing the effects of hybrid work, inflation, gun violence and other factors that have hollowed out the downtown. “Anything that helps encourage diners to get to downtown D.C. and enjoy the world-class dining and entertainment we have is a great thing.”

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Sanders calls Sinema ‘corporate Democrat’ who ‘sabotaged’ legislation


Zach Schonfeld
Sun, December 11, 2022 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) on Sunday as a “corporate Democrat” who “sabotaged” party priorities following her announcement that she was becoming an Independent.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” with co-anchor Dana Bash, Sanders said Sinema didn’t have the guts to take on special interests while attacking her voting record.

“She doesn’t,” Sanders said. “She is a corporate Democrat who has, in fact, along with Sen. [Joe] Manchin [D-W.Va.] sabotaged enormously important legislation.”

Sinema on Friday announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, a move that enraged many in the party and came three days after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won reelection and gave Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority.

Sinema will keep her committee assignments through the Democratic caucus, which will allow the party to keep much of its newly gained power compared to the power-sharing agreement created by the current 50-50 makeup.

But her move now poses a key decision for Democrats as to whether they will still nominate a candidate for Arizona’s upcoming Senate contest in 2024.

Sinema has not yet said if she will run for reelection, but rumors had grown that Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) or another progressive would mount a primary challenge to Sinema.

“I happen to suspect that it’s probably a lot to do with politics back in Arizona,” Sanders said on CNN of Sinema’s decision.

“I think the Democrats, they’re not all that enthusiastic about somebody who helps sabotage some of the most important legislation that protects the interests of working families and voting rights and so forth,” he added. “So I think it really has to do with her political aspirations for the future in Arizona. But for us, I think nothing much has changed in terms of the functioning of the U.S. Senate.”

The Hill has reached out to Sinema’s office for comment.

Sanders is now one of three independents in the upper chamber, although he and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) both caucus with Democrats.

Sinema, along Manchin, was one of the most moderate members of the Senate Democratic Conference, at times drawing ire from others in the party as they attempted to pass major legislation with razor-thin majorities.

She has opposed efforts to eliminate the legislative filibuster, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passing most bills, and garnered accusations from progressives that she is cozy with corporate interests as she sparred over elements of Democrats’ massive social spending bill.

“Americans are told that we have only two choices – Democrat or Republican – and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold, views that have been pulled further and further toward the extremes. Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice, and when I ran for the U.S. House and the Senate, I promised Arizonans something different,” Sinema wrote in an Arizona Republic op-ed explaining her decision.

REST IN POWER
Pioneering Black feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes dies at 84


Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP



Associated Press
Sun, December 11, 2022 

NEW YORK — Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering Black feminist, child welfare advocate and lifelong community activist who toured the country speaking with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and appears with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.

Hughes died Dec. 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, said Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia. Her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, said the cause was old age.

Though they came to feminism from different places — Hughes from community activism and Steinem from journalism — the two forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class, a divide dating back to the origins of the American women’s movement. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.

In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Hughes, her work always rooted in community activism, organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city. But she was perhaps best known for her work helping countless families through the community center she established on Manhattan’s West Side, offering day care, job training, advocacy training and more.

“She took families off the street and gave them jobs,” Malmsten, her daughter, told The Associated Press on Sunday, reflecting on what she felt was her mother’s most important work.

Steinem, too, paid tribute to Hughes’ community work. “My friend Dorothy Pitman Hughes ran a pioneering neighborhood childcare center on the west side of Manhattan,” Steinem said in an email. “We met in the seventies when I wrote about that childcare center, and we became speaking partners and lifetime friends. She will be missed, but if we keep telling her story, she will keep inspiring us all.”

Laura L. Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, “With Her Fist Raised,” came out last year, said in Ms. Magazine (of which Pitman was a co-founder along with Steinem) that Hughes “defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care.”

Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on Oct. 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes committed herself to activism at an early age, according to an obituary written by her family. When she was 10, it said, her father was nearly beaten to death and left on the family’s doorstep. The family believed he was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, and Hughes decided to dedicate herself to helping others through activism.

She moved to New York City in the late 1950s when she was nearly 20 and worked as a salesperson, nightclub singer and house cleaner. By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others.

In the late 1960s, she set up her West 80th St. community center, providing care for children and also support for their parents.

“She realized that child-care challenges were deeply entangled with issues of racial discrimination, poverty, drug use, substandard housing, welfare hotels, job training and even the Vietnam War,” Lovett wrote last year. Hughes “recognized that the strongest anchor for local community action centered on children and worked to fix the roots of inequality in her community.”

It was at the center that she met Steinem, then a journalist writing a story for New York Magazine. They became friends and, from 1969 to 1973, spoke across the country at college campuses, community centers and other venues on gender and race issues.

“Dorothy’s style was to call out the racism she saw in the white women’s movement,” Lovett said in Ms. “She frequently took to the stage to articulate the way in which white women’s privilege oppressed Black women but also offered her friendship with Gloria as proof this obstacle could be overcome.”

By the 1980s, Hughes was becoming an entrepreneur. She had moved to Harlem and opened an office supply business, Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman. But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone program.

She would remember some of her experiences in the 2000 book, “Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner-City Is This Anyway!: One Woman’s Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone.”

Hughes was portrayed in “The Glorias,” the 2020 film about Steinem, by actor Janelle Monaé.

She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.

Court upholds Connecticut's transgender athlete policy


Bloomfield High School transgender athlete Terry Miller, second from left, wins the final of the 55-meter dash over transgender athlete Andraya Yearwood, far left, and other runners in the Connecticut girls Class S indoor track meet at Hillhouse High School, on Feb. 7, 2019, in New Haven, Conn. A federal appeals court on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022, dismissed a challenge to Connecticut's policy of allowing transgender girls to compete girls' high school sports, rejecting arguments by four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes. 

(AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb, File) 

DAVE COLLINS
Fri, December 16, 2022 

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a challenge to Connecticut's policy of allowing transgender girls to compete in girls high school sports, rejecting arguments by four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld a lower court judge's dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the policy. The panel said the four cisgender athletes lacked standing to sue — in part because their claims that they were deprived of wins, state titles and athletic scholarship opportunities were speculative.

“All four Plaintiffs regularly competed at state track championships as high school athletes, where Plaintiffs had the opportunity to compete for state titles in different events,” the decision said. “And, on numerous occasions, Plaintiffs were indeed “champions,” finishing first in various events, even sometimes when competing against (transgender athletes).”

The judges added, “Plaintiffs simply have not been deprived of a ‘chance to be champions.’”

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Council argued its policy is designed to comply with a state law that requires all high school students be treated according to their gender identity. It also said the policy is in accordance with Title IX, the federal law that allows girls equal educational opportunities, including in athletics.

The American Civil Liberties Union defended the two transgender athletes at the center of the lawsuit — Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood.

“Today’s ruling is a critical victory for fairness, equality, and inclusion” Joshua Block, a lawyer for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. "This critical victory strikes at the heart of political attacks against transgender youth while helping ensure every young person has the right to play.”

Transgender athletes' ability to compete in sports is the subject of a continuing national debate. At least 12 Republican-led states have passed laws banning transgender women or girls in sports based on the premise it gives them an unfair competitive advantage.

Transgender rights advocates counter such laws aren’t just about sports, but another way to demean and attack transgender youth.

Christiana Kiefer, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom who represented the four Connecticut cisgender athletes, said she and other alliance attorneys are considering how to respond, including possibly asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Friday's decision.

“Our clients, like all female athletes across the country, deserve fair competition,” Kiefer said in a phone interview. “And that means fair and equal quality of competition, and that just does not happen when you’re forced to compete against biological males in their sports.”

Kiefer added, “The vast majority of the American public recognizes that in order to have fair sports, we have to protect the female category, and I think you’re seeing that trend increasingly with states across the country passing laws to protect women’s sports. ... This is certainly not the end of the road in the fight for fairness for female athletes.”

The plaintiffs sought injunctions to bar enforcement of the state policy on transgender athletes and to remove records set by transgender athletes from the books, as well as money damages.

In arguments before a federal judge in Connecticut in February 2021, Roger Brooks, another lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said Title IX guarantees girls “equal quality” of competition, which he said is denied by having to race people with what he described as inherent physiological advantages.

Brooks said the transgender sprinters improperly won 15 championship races between 2017 and 2020 and cost cisgender girls the opportunity to advance to other races 85 times.

Miller and Yearwood, the transgender sprinters from Bloomfield and Cromwell, respectively, frequently outperformed their cisgender competitors.

The plaintiffs competed directly against them, almost always losing to Miller and usually finishing behind Yearwood. One of the plaintiffs, Chelsea Mitchell of Canton High School, finished third in the 2019 state championship in the girls 55-meter indoor track competition behind Miller and Yearwood.

All the athletes have since graduated from high school.