Transgender Wrestler Highlights Birth Certificate Flaws

UPDATE: This post has been updated to include a video interview of attorney Jim Baudhuin, and updated information in SportsDay's article, regarding the identity of the plaintiff in the lawsuit against the UIL.

Meet Mack Beggs. He's a junior at Trinity High School in Euless, Texas. He wrestles in the 110-lb. weight class for Trinity's wrestling team. He finished his season undefeated, 44-0. As reported by SportsDay, he captured the University Interscholastic League (UIL) Class 6A Region II chamionship last Friday, February 17, 2017. His next competition is for the state title. Seems like a normal elite high school athlete. But that's where normal ends for this athlete. Mack is the subject of a fiercely tense debate, and a lawsuit against the UIL. For Mack Beggs was born a female.

Beggs began his transition from female-to-male two years ago. As is normal for female-to-male transition, he takes testosterone treatments to raise his Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels into the normal range of a male. These levels are how a female's musculature, shape, hair growth, etc., enable Beggs to have the build, look, and feel of a male. These are normal, typical treatments. As such, Beggs is exempt from the athletics rule banning steroids, because they are medically necessary, and he is under the care of a physician during this lengthy process.

The athletic steroid ban is the reason for the lawsuit filed, two weeks before the match, by attorney Jim Baudhuin, the parent of a Coppell High School wrestler, on behalf of plaintiff Pratik Khandelwal, whose daughter also wrestles for Coppell. Both Baudhuin's and Khandelwal's daughters would not have competed against Beggs, as they are in different weight classes. Baudhuin urged the UIL to suspend Beggs for steroid use, but Beggs' treatments are exempted from the rule under a "safe harbor" clause. Come last Friday, Beggs won his championship match on Friday because his opponent, Coppell's Madeline Rocha, forfeited the match.

And Baudhuin emphasized that his complaint was not that Mack was transgender. He was fine with that. It is that Mack's treatments give him an unfair advantage against female opponents. The argument has merit. Why, you might ask, doesn't Mack just wrestle on the boys team, where the testosterone levels will be on par, and not an advantage? Good question. Beggs, with the help of his mother, Angela, tried that. They couldn't get the UIL to budge from the rules stipulated in Paragraph g and h of Subchapter J, Section 360 of the UIL Constitution and Contest Rules, which states:

(g) Boys may not wrestle against girls, and vice versa. This prohibition is only applicable when the contest is held in Texas or in any other state that sponsors wrestling programs for both boys and girls.
(h) Gender shall be determined based on a student’s birth certificate. In cases where a student’s birth certificate is unavailable, other similar government documents used for the purpose of identification may be substituted.

Parents may be dismayed at the physical disadvantage their daughters face, and many are worried that the disadvantage is unsafe for their daughters, and rightly so. And it seems that the frustration of parents, as well as the focus of the lawsuit, is aimed at the UIL and not not Mack Beggs. But when the UIL proposed to formalize the gender policy (it had informally already been in use to that point), according to a Oct. 2015 Texas Tribune article, "the 32 member legislative council on Monday passed on an opportunity to vote on the proposed rule. Instead, the council decided to send it to the superintendents of member districts — with a recommendation that they approve it." So the rule formally went on the books at the approval of district superintendents, not the UIL. The UIL just adopted the rule and enforces it. So it's likely that the lawsuit needed to include the superintendents to have any legal weight to change the rule. Buidhuin may find that out for himself in court.

From a social equality standpoint, this situation is fantastic. Mack isn't "taking advantage." He doesn't want to compete with the girls. He's being forced to. He's being forced by an association rule, that is engendered by obtuse legislators at the state level, who want to force their version of "societal norms" on people who are outside of those norms.

And not for nothing, Mack won't have this problem once he graduates. In 2010, the NCAA adopted the "NCAA Inclusion of Transgender Student-Athletes," adopted by the Office of Inclusion in August 2011. It states:

The following policies clarify participation of transgender student-athletes undergoing hormonal treatment for gender transition:

1. A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who has received a medical exception for treatment with testosterone for diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for purposes of NCAA competition may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing that team status to a mixed team.
2. A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.

Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.

• A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men’s or women’s team.
• A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.

So if Mack wants to complete in college, he will be required to compete as a man, because he takes hormone treatments. If Mack decides to try out for the Olympics, they have specific rules as well. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) held the "IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism" in November 2015. Since 2003, transgender athletes have been allowed to compete with their respective genders provided they had undergone sexual reassignment surgery, the prevailing theory being that the surgery would have required the hormone therapy. At this meeting, the IOC agreed "the following guidelines to be taken into account by sports organisations when determining eligibility to compete in male and female competition:"

1. Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.
2. Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
   1. The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
   2. The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).
   3. The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.
   4. Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by testing. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competition will be suspended for 12 months.

So Mack can even try out for the Olympics, with the caveat that the IOC may monitor his testosterone levels to ensure they don't exceed normal levels for male athletes. He will never be able to compete with women again, and that will suit him just fine. The point is that at all upper levels of athletic competition, transgender athletes are able to compete, with their identified genders. And the lawsuit against the UIL isn't asking that Mack be banned altogether - just that he can't compete with girls. And it's a reasonable request.

And take a close look at Mack, because it speaks to the larger societal problem. Is there anything in the photo above that looks female? Of course not. But THAT is what girls will see in their restrooms in schools and public facilities, if transgender males like Mack are forced to use female restrooms. The argument is always framed in the guise of "criminals" and "pedophiles," who will dress up like women and infiltrate female restrooms and rape little girls till their heart's content. It is a fake argument, being that female public restrooms are all closed-stall. Women won't even know if a transgender female is in the restroom most of the time, because they are typically behind closed doors. It is a ploy based in fear, bigotry and false equivalence. Conversely, the rules - as the legislature wants them - will make interactions that do happen with transgenders a lot more awkward and worrisome, because they won't wonder if the girl next to them is a guy. They'll see what is, quite obviously, a guy standing next to them and wonder if he belongs there. And if that guy worries them, and they report a guy in the women's restroom, are they saying it's okay for authorities to yank the guy out of the restroom and pull his pants down to verify there's a vagina? Always on their high horse, the people shouting the loudest about transgenders in restrooms, in states like Texas and North Carolina, are ignorant to the consequences of getting what they want. Transgenders don't use restrooms matching their gender to inflame paranoia. If anything, in addition to being how they are most comfortable, they do it to make everyone else feel less awkward. Somehow, lawmakers have ignored the reality that the rules they want to implement are counter- intuitive to the safety, security, and peace of mind they claim to be fighting to ensure. Politicians, always good for fanning the flames of their own failures...

Mack undoubtedly has no desire to become the poster-child of the transgender debate. He just wants to wrestle - with the guys. But the hand being forced in this situation belies the true effects of preventing transgenders from being who they are. Mack is wiping the floor with the girls in his wrestling district. He likely will do the same thing at state. And the parents, teachers, associations, agencies, and legislators, who refuse to see reason, can sit and watch as he wipes the floor with them - it's their fault it's happening.

Rollback of Gun Control Rule Highlights Regulatory Obstacles

Lois Beckett wrote a piece in The Guardian in which she aims to highlight issues with Obama's gun law regarding the mentally ill that put opposition to the law uncharacteristically on the side of science, but ultimately exposes a fundamental flaw in establishing regulatory control that is often overlooked. The Obama rule "would have disqualified from gun ownership an estimated 75,000 people who have mental illnesses or disabilities and are assigned a representative to manage their social security benefits." Beckett quotes psychiatrist Paul Appplebaum:

The Obama rule “is fundamentally not a rational policy”, said Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatrist who directs the law, ethics and psychiatry division at Columbia University. “It’s not a rule that would be very likely to make us safer.” The people targeted by the rule “are not a particularly high-risk group for violent behavior”, Appelbaum said. “Gun control stirs up strong emotions, and there are a lot of people who will support anything that they perceive as reducing access to weapons by anyone... There are a lot of people on the other side, who will support anybody having access to weapons by any reasons whatsoever... in this case, “the rationality of the regulation itself is sort of lost in the furore.”(sic)

The idea here is that anyone so debilitated, as to need the assistance of another person to act as a legal guardian to receive and manage their Social Security money, isn't going to be going into gun shows or dealer stores to purchase a weapon. And that's an argument with merit. But the scope of that rule unmasks the problem with implementing regulatory control where there wasn't much to begin with. Obama basically used this rule as an entry point to control, which would be fine-tuned later on, once people had gotten used to having the rule. If that feels familiar, it's because it's the same approach used to implement Obamacare. Here was the goal with implementing Obamacare:

1. Pass the law.
2. Get funds flowing into the system as quickly as possible, so people are used to it before Obama's first term is up.
3. Get as many people signed up into the system as quickly as possible. The more users, the better, before the first term is up.
4. Fight off any legal challenges as quickly as possible, to prevent any delay of flooding the exchanges with customers.

Obama needed to get people into the system as early and as quickly as possible - a problematic goal exacerbated by the abject failure to get the online system up and running right away - because, if he didn't win re-election in 2012, he wanted the system up and running , and filled with customers, to make it as difficult as possible to dismantle it. The longer the system ran, the more people would get used to it, the less likely they would be to call for it's repeal, and the more difficult it would be to get rid of it without taking away people's health care.

And it feels like this was the goal with the gun control law. If the law is already in the system, it can be tweaked or refined later, to better articulate the intentions. The mental conditions of the people in this law was probably seen as so obvious as to not have any intentions toward purchasing a weapon that there would be no reason to fight back on it. Who cares about a law that no one it's aimed at could, or would, ever violate? That's any easy law to dismiss, right? Let it pass, if it makes Obama feel like he's done something... And later on, of course, there's an existing law that's ripe for refinement that can be tweaked toward an end that was intended all along.

It's easy to smack Obama down for attempting to do it this way, but that's what the obstructionist Republican Congress left him with, as well as the NRA. Obama wasn't just fighting a Congress that wouldn't budge on anything, he was dealing with Wayne LaPierre being unmovable in any way toward some form of regulation that would protect 2nd Amendment rights, but make it harder for criminals or emotionally broken people to get their hands on weapons to do harm. LaPierre and the NRA have been steadfast in their obtuse attitude toward gun violence and mass killings, which is basically the metaphorical sticking of fingers in their ears and shouting "LaLaLaLaLaLa I can't HEAR you...!" They never offer any tangible suggestions for getting control of the problem, just platitudes about how sad they are for "yet another tragic loss, we offer our sincerest condolences to the family in this, their time of heartache, and join the NRA now by going to our website..."

So of course Obama would invest in a rule so benign it would never need to be enforced, because that's how things get done these days. You have to sneak something by everyone and hope they don't pay too much attention to it, lest they burn a glial cell or two and realize the true intentions. Democrats likely knew the intention, which is why they are fighting to keep it. They need it as an entry point for some time down the line. Lose it, and they'd have to find another way.

The ideal method needed here would involve HIPAA. And the early signs of moving in that direction are already here. "On January 4, 2016, HHS moved forward on the Administration’s commitment to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule to expressly permit certain covered entities to disclose to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) the identities of those individuals who, for mental health reasons, already are prohibited by Federal law from having a firearm." The intention is already heading that way. What we need is the NRA and Congress to help come up with a plan that maintains rights, but accomplishes the goal. But they have to be willing to help, rather than issuing blanket denials to be of any assistance while people are dying, then implying that, if only the eight-year olds in Newtown were packing...

The White House Mess

By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

Monday, FEBRUARY 13, 2017

Donald Trump sold himself to voters as a successful businessman who knew how to get things done, a no-nonsense manager who’d whip government into shape.

But he’s showing himself to be about the most inept, disorganized, sloppy, incompetent president in recent memory, whose White House is nearly dysfunctional.

He allowed Michael Flynn to hang on until the last minute. In any halfway competent administration Flynn would have been gone the moment it became clear he lied to the vice president about his contacts with Russia.

Sean Spicer is a joke, literally. His vituperative, vindictive press conferences are already rich food for late-night comedy. In a White House that had any idea what it means to be an effective press secretary, Spicer would be out the door.

The Muslim travel ban was totally bungled – unclear, haphazard, badly thought out. Trump complains that “his people didn’t give him good advice,” but the people most directly responsible for it – Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller – have only gained more power in the White House.

Meanwhile, Trump’s White House has sprung more leaks than any in memory. Aides are leaking news about other aides. They’re leaking examples of Trump’s incompetence and weirdness. They’re leaking the contents of telephone calls to other heads of state in which Trump was unprepared, didn’t know basic facts, and berated foreign leaders.

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus seems to have no idea what’s going on. A White House official complained to The Washington Post, “We have to get Reince to relax into the job and become more competent, because he’s seeing shadows where there are no shadows.” Trump’s buddy Chris Ruddy described Priebus as being “in way over his head.”

Infighting is wild. Rumors are swirling that Kellyanne Conway wants Priebu’s job, that Stephen Miller is eyeing Spicer’s job, that no one trusts anyone else.

The New York Times reports “chaotic and anxious days inside the White House’s National Security Council.” Council staff read Trump’s tweets, and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls.

Trump himself is remarkably sloppy with sensitive national security information. For example, on Saturday night he discussed North Korea’s latest missile launch on a mobile phone at his table in the middle of Mar-a-Lago’s private club’s dining area, within earshot of private club members. A guest at the club even posed with the military aide who carries “the football” (the briefcase containing instructions for authorizing a nuclear attack).

The U.S. intelligence community is so convinced that Trump and his administration have been compromised by Russia that they’re no longer giving the White House all of their most sensitive information, lest it end up in Putin’s hands.

A senior National Security Agency official says the National Security Agency is systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, fearing Trump and his staff can’t keep secrets. The intelligence community is concerned that even the Situation Room – the room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings – has been compromised by Russia.

The White House mess is Trump’s own fault. He’s supposed to be in charge,but it turns out he’s not a tough manager. He’s not even a good manager. He seems not to have any interest in managing at all.

Instead of whipping government into shape, he’s whipping it into a cauldron of dysfunction and intrigue.

Just like his promises to “drain the Washington swamp” and limit the influence of big money, get Wall Street out of policy making, and turn government back to the people, Trump’s promise of an efficient government is another giant bait-and-switch.

Source: robertreich.org

ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.

Why is Trump's Swamp Bubbling, Instead of Draining?

When Donald Trump campaigned over the last year, the phrase he used ad nauseum to portray himself as an outsider looking to buck the system was that he was going to "drain the swamp." And when asked what that meant, he always pointed to the influence of lobbyists and special interests.He was going to do away with lobbyists and special interests, and make the government work the way it was supposed to - the government protecting the interests of the governed, who put them there. It sounds good, and clearly a lot of his supporters believed him, because he was worth billions, so he didn't have to bow down to anyone's wallet. He told them so himself. Of course he refused to show tax returns, and said his net worth was whatever he felt it was (if he felt like $10 billion on a Tuesday, then he was worth $10 billion), but his followers kept stomping on the ground, chanting for the messiah he presented himself to be:

• "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.
• "Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.”
• "We have 41 days to make possible every dream you’ve ever dreamed."
• “The forgotten men and women of our country, people who work hard but no longer have a voice - I am your voice."
• I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country. Believe me. Believe me.”
• “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves."
• “Let me tell you something. China will behave and China will be our friend. We’ll do better under China with me and we’re also going to do better economically with me. They are going to respect our country again."

We are supposed to be a country built on the principles of checks and balances. Trump basically said the country's only chance is to put their faith in him, that he will fix everything, and "drain the swamp" of everything that has ruined the country, and make everyone else behave - he's the world's dad, who will put them in a corner until they learn how to operate under his authority, apparently, so that he can make America great again. Never mind that, if he turns America inward and eliminates our interests in the global sphere - pulling companies back to the US, instituting tariffs on the world that will only make things more expensive for the tired and broke US workers he claims to be protecting, rather than adversely affecting the companies remaining overseas - it hardly matters if anyone respects us, yes? But this didn't matter. People wanted their strongman, not a three branch system of government, so Trump got his votes. And won. And he came into the Oval Office like a White Knight, protecting the virtuous while grabbing them by the crotch. Let the draining of the swamp commence!

Well, not so much, really. Or at all. Nay, we got a full view of Trump's swamp and here's what it looked like:

• Secretary of State: Rex Tillerson
  

  Tillerson was not only the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, he was the head of Exxon Neftgas, a joint venture between Exxon Mobil and Russia's Rosneft - Russia's largest and government owned oil company. For putting America first, it would seem hypocritical to have a guy who's relationship with Vladimir Putin is based on energy revenues. We are supposedly looking to Russia to help defeat ISIS. What position does it put us in if our Secretary of State can possibly be manipulated by a Russian leader who could affect our energy interests if we don't do what he wants?

• Secretary of Energy: Rick Perry
  

  Perry not only is a lapdog for America's oil and natural gas companies, he wants to get rid of the Department of Energy. He has for years, and has said so. This is also because Rick doesn't know what the department does. He was shocked to learn that his department oversees America's nuclear arsenal and is responsible for the oversight of nuclear proliferation. He just thought he would be able to use the position to undermine alternative energy companies to push an oil and gas first agenda, and then get rid of the department. Turns out it's an actual job, in a department he thinks shouldn't exist. Something about a "fox in the henhouse?" Yikes.

• Secretary of Labor: Andy Pudzer
  

  Pudzer was the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent corporation Hardees and Carl's Jr. fast food chains. The labor department deals with wage and occupational safety violations, things Pudzer was against in his former job, primarily becasue his companies were often a target of such violation investigations. He was an outspoken critic of worker protections in general - wages, paid leave, overtime. He thinks minimum wage increases and expanded overtime hurt workers, not help - a position only a wealthy man could possibly have. He also is a heavy proponent of automation - not a position workers would expect the guy running the department designed to protect them would have. He also opposes the joint employer doctrine, which holds parent companies responsible for employment violations by contractors and franchisees. To say the least, Pudzer has left little doubt that he has any interest in protecting workers. So this is a natural appointment, yes?

• Secretary of Commerce: Wilbur Ross
  

  Trump's "champion of manufacturing" in fact made most of his billions buying and selling distressed manufacturing companies as the head of Rothschild, Inc., outsourcing jobs and slashing benefits in the companies he restructured. Great for his bottom line, but not really in line with the America first economic position that Trump is claiming to champion.

• Secretary of Treasury: Steve Mnuchin
  

  Mnuchin is basically everything you likely hate. He was a senior executive at Goldman Sachs when the long game of derivatives and credit default swaps were creating the housing bubble. Between 1994 and 1999, he was the head of the Mortgage Security Department (ding ding ding!) and the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities division. Which means he headed the very divisions that created the crisis in it's infancy. When the crisis finally happened, Mnuchin tried to buy Merill Lynch's mortgage-backed CDOs, but was outbid by Lone Star Funds. When the recession hit after the crisis, Mnuchin bought IndyMac and renamed it OneWest. OneWest then launched a mass foreclosure practice, likely supported by a loss sharing agreement with the FDIC, which reimbursed OneWest for losses. So OneWest got the money and the homes. They were also accused of "robo-signing," whereby documents are signed without review, essentially running the foreclosure process like a paper mill, without regard to whether the foreclosures were proper. Mnuchin denies this, of course, despite one of his vice presidents describing exactly how the process worked, and despite Mnuchin himself signing public documents, like a consent agreement in 2011, that attest to that very thing. So when Trump says he's looking out for the little guy, the working class, then picks a Treasury Secretary who helped create the very crisis he later profited off of, and did it off the backs of workers losing their homes while the FDIC bolstered his ability to take their homes and get his losses covered, it's hard to imagine he'll have the backs of working Americans, as opposed to the Wall Street companies who made his Treasury secretary rich.

• Attorney General: Jeff Sessions
  

  Sessions would be responsible for upholding civil rights laws, possibly a conflict of interest for a man quoted as calling the NAACP & ALCU "un-American" & "Communist-Inspired" for "trying to force civil rights down the throats of people." He was also quoted by Justice Department prosecutor J. Gerald Hebert, who told Sessions in 1981 that a federal prosecutor had called a prominent white attorney "a disgrace to his race" for representing black clients, as responding, "Well, maybe he is." Hebert recounted this exchange at Sessions' 1986 Senate confirmation hearing, which ultimately rejected him for the federal bench. The question is whether his alleged racist leanings, if true, would have softened in the last 30 years, or tempered his resolve with age.

And while these are the most conflicted of his cabinet picks (Betsy DeVos for Education wasn't worth detailing), this empowerment of like-minded wealthy elites is only bolstered by the decisions Trump has made since the election and, later, taking office:

• He hired a litany of consultants and lobbyists to head his transitions teams:
  

  J. Steven Hart, a labor lobbyist, to head his labor team
  Michael McKenna, an energy lobbyist, to lead his Energy Department team
  Ray Washburn, a Dallas fundraiser, to lead his Commerce Department team
  Michael Catanzaro, an oil, gas, and coal lobbyist to plan for energy independence, in one of the greatest ironies
  Michael Torrey, a food industry lobbyist to lead the Department of Agriculture team
  Jeffrey Eisenach, a telecommunications consultant who has fought for deregulation and reforming the FCC, to lead the team choosing the members for the FCC
  

• He pulled us out of the TPP, effectively removing the only true obstacle to China taking over the domination of Asia-Pacific trading. Hard to see the advantage for anyone but Trump in bolstering the economic aspirations of a country he does massive business with, and has been hoping to expand - a goal surely to be resumed when he leaves office.
• He restructured the National Security Council to elevate Steve Bannon to a permanent member of the principals committee, and removing the director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who will now only attend when pertinent issues are being discussed. Yes, don't want the people who know things to be in the room, they might point out that the agenda doesn't mesh with reality, and who needs reality interjected into the bubble?
• He signs an executive order that says for every regulation the executive branch proposes, two others must be repealed. Really? Blindly repealing regulations without concern for the effects of doing so, so long as there is "less regulation?"
• He pledges at the National Prayer Breakfast to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt religious groups from wading into politics. Straddling the Separation of Church and State fence like an Adonis...
• Wanting to join the deregulation party, Congress follows Trump's lead and repeals the Stream Protection Rule, which prevented coal mining companies from dumping toxic waste debris into streams. Their presumption is that Trump will agree and sign the repeal, despite the fact that the damage to coal has been inflicted by the advent and market increase in natural gas. But what the hey, Trump is demanding blind deregulation at a 2-for-1 clip.
• He signs two Executive orders to review and roll back Dodd-Frank financial regulations after meeting with JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, chief of the nation’s biggest bank, Blackstone billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the richest private equity chief on Wall Street, and BlackRock's Larry Fink, CEO of the nation's biggest asset manager - basically some of the biggest power brokers on Wall Street.
• He signs the second Executive Order involving Dodd-Frank, to halt the Fiduciary Rule that mandates financial advisers to act in the best interest of their clients, rather than set their clients up to fail and then bet against them failing. This was a rule directly resulted from the actions of the banks during the financial crisis. But this is about profits. We can't be worried about screwing the clients. Shocked and dismayed that a president who regularly gets sued for screwing clients and contractors out of money he owes them would demand that such a rule protecting clients be done away with. Shocked.And.Dismayed.

So what we have seen so far is the president hire the very lobbyists he claims to want to get rid of to run his transition teams, pull out of a trade deal that favors a country he has strong business ties to and hopes of expansion in the future, deregulate in favor of wealthy industries for profit motives at the expense of the environment they destroy, and whittle away regulations that hold Wall Street in check. So basically Trump's swamp is bubbling freely, rather than draining. How could his voters have been so duped? I mean, Trump is nothing, if not the epitome of honesty and integrity. He would never lie through his teeth, virtually every single day, for the entirety of his campaign, and then screw over those voters he championed and act to support the wealthy as soon as he gets into office.

Wait a minute...

Neil Gorsuch the new Supreme?

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals as his nominee to fill Antonin Scalia's vacant seat on the Supreme Court. This was hailed by conservatives as courageous, decried by liberals as dangerous, with Nancy Pelosi going so far as to call the choice "hostile." And most of the Senate Democrats have resolved to hold up the nomination for as long as they possibly can. Not a surprise, considering the abdication of duty exhibited by Senate Republicans when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Scalia's seat has been vacant for almost a year now, and cases have been kicked back to the lower courts due to 4-4 draws in the current make up. Mitch McConnell basked in the glow of extreme pride that he successfully held up the process long enough to get a Republican president in office. Not a joke, McConnell himself said at a campaign rally in Fancy Farm, Kentucky, "One of my proudest moments is when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.'" And the crowd went wild.

Now that they have accomplished this, Gorsuch is supposed to be their heir apparent to Scalia. That may or may not be the case, but there are already cries of foul from the left because of Gorsuch's professions of concern about the judicial system being leaned on too much for decisions that should remain with the legislature or voters, yet his decisions show him being a staunch obstacle when liberal issues come before him, versus a red carpet when conservative issues come before him. He has a history of supporting conservative executives breaking the law (Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal) and dissenting on the rights of protesters (his entire college career, opinions on Aparteid protests). But a big hint into how he thinks and operates has been brought up in a little known case in Utah, where the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (PPAU) sued Utah Governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, for directing his Executive Director of the Utah Department of Health (UDOH), Joseph Miner, to "stop acting as an intermediary for so-called “pass-through” federal funds that PPAU uses to carry out certain programs in the State of Utah." Essentially, Planned Parenthood in Utah receives their federal funds via distribution through UDOH. "Pass-through" funds are funds that have been granted to an entity, but the state has no infrastructure to provide the distribution of the money. So it utilizes an existing entity in that state - in this case, UDOH - to distribute the funds for them. The Governor basically told Miner to stop distributing the funds, supposedly in response to the long-since debunked undercover videos purporting Planned Parenthood to be a fetal tissue mill.

So here's what happened:

• The district court initially granted the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), but ultimately withdrew it and denied PPAU the preliminary injunction it was seeking.
• PPAU filed an interlocutory appeal. "Interlocutory" is a legal word for "interim," meaning that the appeal was filed while claims in the original case had still yet to be resolved.
• This appeal goes to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel randomly selected to hear the case was Circuit Judges Mary Beck Briscoe and Robert Bacharach, and Senior Circuit Judge David Ebel. The three judge panel is normal procedure.
• The panel "granted a stay in favor of PPAU to prevent the cessation of funding during the pendency of this appeal, and we also expedited the briefing and oral argument schedule... we reverse the decision of the district court and remand with instructions to grant PPAU’s motion for preliminary injunction. In other words, they overturned the district court judge's decision so Planned Parenthood could continue to receive funds.
• "Subsequent to that issuance, a poll was called, sua sponte, to consider en banc rehearing." And here's where the problem comes in. "Sua Sponte" means an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. "En Banc" means that the rehearing is held in front of the entire court bench of available active Circuit judges (12 total if all are available), instead of a randomly selected three-judge panel.
• The reason this is a problem is because, according to Title 7, Rule 35, of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, only a party to the case can request an en banc rehearing. They have to petition the Circuit Court of Appeals court for it. "Sua Sponte" means that a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals requested the en banc rehearing without either party petitioning for it. That is almost unheard of and, some argue, a violation of the rules of procedure.
• A majority vote of the entire bench is required for an en banc rehearing to be granted. Only four judges voted yes: Chief Judge Tim Tymkovich, Circuit Judges Harris Hartz, Jerome Holmes, and - wait for it - Neil Gorsuch. The en banc rehearing was denied, and who do you suppose wrote the dissenting opinion? Neil Gorsuch.
• Under normal rules and procedure, an en banc hearing would likely have been voted down, even if it had been petitioned by one of the parties to the case. That is because the decision by the panel was predicated on a "matter of fact," rather than a "matter of law." That's an important distinction, because a "matter of fact" only affects that specific case. A "matter of law" affects cases in the future, who would look to the current case for "precedent." So because the decision in the case would not extend beyond that case itself, an en banc rehearing would almost certainly have been voted down anyway. So why would a circuit judge request one without a petition to do so? Some think the answer to that lies in the fact that Gorsuch wrote the dissent - implying a strong likelihood that he is the judge who requested the en banc. Since there was no legal reason to request it, the reason would likely be ideological, meaning the judge who requested it was likely anti-abortion, and wanted to seize the opportunity to go after Planned Parenthood, even though the three-judge panel ruled the other way. The en banc procedure would be an opportunity to overrule his/her own colleagues' decision.

So, is Neil Gorsuch anti-abortion? No one knows for sure, because there isn't any abortion case law involving him, and he isn't known to have written any opinions on abortion specifically. But he has ruled against assisted suicide, and he wrote a concurring opinion in the Hobby Lobby case, which granted employers the right to deny birth control as part of company-sponsored health coverage:

"All of us face the problem of complicity. All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others. For some, religion provides an essential source of guidance both about what constitutes wrongful conduct and the degree to which those who assist others in committing wrongful conduct themselves bear moral culpability.

As they understand it, ordering their companies to provide insurance coverage for drugs or devices whose use is inconsistent with their faith itself violates their faith, representing a degree of complicity their religion disallows… No doubt, the Greens’ religious convictions are contestable. Some may even find the Greens’ beliefs offensive. But no one disputes that they are sincerely held religious beliefs."

In this case, birth control is "wrongdoing," and companies have the right to deny it as a part of health coverage. Moreover, he thought the ruling didn't go far enough. He believed that individual owners, not just corporations, had the right to make that decision. While he did say that the Green's religious convictions are contestable, and acknowledged that they could be viewed as offensive, he never really gives away what he himself believes, other than in the religious freedom of employers to invade the private lives of their employees and dictate behavior. That is a big enough problem for anyone in states that are pushing religious freedom laws as a legal means of discriminating against the LGBTQ community. But if he is anti-abortion, and was willing to bend or, possibly, break rules to affect an already decided appeal, that could pose big potential problems with women's rights. If he is part of a court that decides that religious freedom laws are acceptable as a means of imparting an individual's beliefs on everyone (Hobby Lobby shows he does believe that to some degree), how does a religious freedom law play into Roe v. Wade, if it comes before The Supremes again? And would he be willing to bend/break rules as a Supreme to get what he wants? John Roberts already did that in the Obamacare case, when he invented a tax that didn't exist, in order to deem said tax constitutional. Can we really afford to have Supremes who don't believe in the rule of law or, worse, believe that they make the laws?

We already have a problem with excessive partisanship on a court that is supposed to be, by definition, neutral - take every case individually, on its merits, and determine constitutionality. That they think their personal beliefs endow them the ability and authority to change or create a law, or it's interpretation within a constitution that was created, and influenced, by framers who accepted religion but maintained that the government was not founded on religion, and angled to separate religion from the government, leaves a sour taste on the prospects of the future of American jurisprudence. The United States is, officially, no religion. And the court, from a legal standpoint, is supposed to be as well. If you can't follow the law, or the constitution, and keep your religion out of it, then you don't belong in any job that demands exactly that.