Trump's Journey Into Adulthood Short-Lived

President Donald Trump's speech to Congress was cheered by supporters and mildly applauded by the media as having turned the corner into being "presidential." That he did not exhibit his typical puerile behavior breached a bar so low that people couldn't help themselves in viewing the accomplishment of reading from a teleprompter for an hour as impressive. One might have wondered when the other shoe would drop, since Tuesday night was a stepping outside of Trump's reality for a moment. The other shoe dropped over the weekend, sooner than one would hope, but longer than might have been expected.

While anyone could be forgiven for expecting a Wednesday tweet from Trump, sporting a knowing grin that says, "Nailed it...," that never had the chance to happen, because on that very day, the news comes out that Jeff Sessions did indeed meet with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak - twice - leading up to the November election. Of course, the problem isn't so much that Sessions met with him, as much as having said, under oath and unprompted, that he never met with any Russians during the campaign. Sessions, being a lawyer, thought he could get away with some linguistic technicalities that would make Bill Clinton smile with knowing approval. Unfortunately, the rest of the country, as well as the Senate committee, see it as a violation of the spirit of the confirmation hearing questions. Sessions could have said he met with the ambassador in a Senate-related capacity, and left the committee with little else to run with. Instead, he omitted the meetings completely in his answer, in hopes that no one noticed and, if they did, he could fall back on technicality. All very lawyerly.

Trump publicly supports Sessions and says that he should not recuse himself from any investigations, after which Jeff Sessions holds a press conference and does exactly that. And he does it on the same day that Trump campaign advisers J.D. Gordon, Carter Page, and Jared Kushner are outed as to having met Kislyak also. So by the early hours of Saturday morning, Trump is ready to start kicking puppies down the street. And so we get this:


Notice that the first tweet is not about Obama's alleged wiretapping, but about Jeff Sessions meeting the Russian ambassador under circumstances set up by the Obama administration. So right off the bat, there is an attempt to bring Obama into something that had nothing to do with him. If ever there was an indicator of where Trump's head was at ten minutes before he started in on Obama, that's it. But clearly, that tweet wasn't going to accomplish what Trump actually wanted, which is to drag Obama into scandal along with him. So 9 minutes later, we get the "Terrible!" tweet. 7 minutes later, he makes a poor attempt to draw an equivalency of Sessions meeting in the campaign season leading up to the election to all the times the White House met the ambassador over the entirety of Obama's second term. Then he muses legal questions in the next two tweets 7, and again 3, minutes later. The last tweet was 10 minutes later, in which he calls Obama a sick person and equates him to Nixon and Watergate.

The legal tweets are the most amusing, because there's a real argument that could be made against Trump for libel. The Nixon v. Fitgerald opinion states that the president is only protected from civil liability if his actions are done in an official capacity, and he doesn't have protections if his actions, even if official, are criminal. Trump might try to claim that his tweets were in an official capacity, but the argument that tweeting is an official presidential action would have to be made to a judge. He might also try to frame "official actions" around the request that Congress investigate the claims. But even that is questionable, since it wasn't Trump that voiced that request - it was Sean Spicer from his Twitter account the next day:


So Trump has himself a bit of a dilemma. He has accused President Obama of having committed a major felony. He provided no evidence that his building was wiretapped; provided no evidence as to which agency was responsible for physically wiretapping his building; provided no source of the information to which the claim is (not) attributed; provided no evidence that the order, if one was given, came from Obama himself. And that last part is highly unlikely. A judge would have had to issue a warrant, and that judge would most likely have to be in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). We can all be assured Trump would not have known that little fact, or he would have probably picked something else to manufacture out of thin air to drag Obama into his misery. Instead, the Senate Intelligence Committee now has to request evidence, because they can't ignore that the claim was made. And all of this is made worse, in that Trump never fact-checked his claim with his own people. As NBC reported:

In addition, it seems that Trump did not try to ask his own administration whether the scenario was true. A senior U.S. official in a position to know told NBC News that Trump "did not consult with the people inside the U.S. government who might know before making this claim.

Meanwhile, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, went on Meet the Press to tell Chuck Todd that there was no wiretapping of Trump in any way, FBI Director James Comey has requested the Department of Justice make a statement rejecting Trump's claim, and Kevin Lewis, Spokesperson to President Barack Obama issued a statement, that "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

All of this speaks to a complete lack of discipline on Trump's part, something that goes back years, and was prevalent throughout the entirety of his presidential campaign. Ironically, Trump has been regularly frustrated with the lack of discipline among several agencies since he took office. Clearly, the example is set at the top.

Response to Trump's Speech to Congress

President Donald Trump's speech to Congress Tuesday night was mostly the expected tropes he's been pushing since he started campaigning. He attempted to highlight accomplishments, while criticizing the state of the country leading up to his inauguration. Most observers seemed to grade him based on his delivery, rather than his policy intentions. As if his ability alone to deliver a speech that didn't reek of a petulant middle schooler anointed the night a success. And fear not, because America is about to be great again:

Dying industries will come roaring back to life; heroic veterans will get the care they so desperately need; our military will be given the resources our brave warriors so richly deserve; crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways, gleaming across our very very beautiful land; our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and, ultimately, stop; and our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety and opportunity; above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.

ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT
Trump touted a list of companies who have promised to invest billions of dollars in America, creating "tens of thousands of new American jobs." He gave no specifics, but that was a running theme throughout the speech. After touting a three trillion dollar market gain since his election victory, Trump said:

We saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of fantastic, and it is a fantastic, new F-35 jet fighter, and we will be saving billions more on contracts all across our government.

Trump has tried taking credit for the F-35 savings before, but the reality is that the Pentagon and F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin have been trying to bring down the cost of the F-35 since it's inception. The F-35's three variants- A, B, and C - have come down in cost since each of their inceptions in 2007, 2008, and 2010, respectively. The Pentagon and Lockheed both have been under fire for years for the cost overruns and delays on delivery. They have been actively reducing costs with each lot, and Lot 10 - the next 90 planes to be delivered - will be cheaper still. Trump had nothing to do with the cost reductions, he simply had meetings with Lockheed, where he approved of their cost reduction estimates for the next lot. And then took credit for it.

Trump also remarked that his administration has instituted a hiring freeze on all non-military and non-essential federal workers. Except, of course:

We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency.

Trump then reiterated his rule for eliminating two regulations for every new one created. It's one of those statements that sounds good, until one realizes that he mentions no barometer for elimination. Just the 2-for-1 mandate. Whether those regulations were actually needed seems to not matter much. Regulation is bad, and so they must go, because jobs. Never mind that most regulations have little to do with jobs. Any costs for regulation are simply passed down to the consumers, so deregulation for deregulation's sake has never been fiscally justified, except that now companies won't have to care as much about their pollution, which is what most regulations in industry address. It's a bit apropos, then, that Trump signed an executive order earlier in the day to dismantle the Clean Water Rule - and a great piece of irony, when he later said he supported clean air and water.

We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency... we're going to stop the regulations that threaten the future and livelihood of our great coal miners.

Nice sentiment, and it got a nice standing ovation from the reds, but it ignores that coal miners' jobs have never been in jeopardy because their companies were not going to be allowed to dump waste into streams. That regulation would only raise energy costs for consumers, if anything. No, coal jobs are suffering because of an inconvenient piece of minutiae that Trump and Republicans always leave out when talking about coal, that being the increasing market share of shale gas. Coal jobs are not coming back. Everyone seems to know that except the president, and an industry that's hanging on by a thread for years. Even when Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, Patriot Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources all went bankrupt, Obama's Clean Power Plan had not yet been implemented. Coal is failing because shale gas is more abundant and cheaper to extract and process, while coal production costs have steadily increased. And they are hit even harder by a depletion in coal reserves, especially in the east. Over a century of mining has depleted the easy-to-get-to reserves. The deeper reserves make it more expensive to get at. And because those reserves are deeper in the earth, coal companies have two issues to deal with: implementing newer technology, at great expense, to get at the deeper reserves, and adhering to regulations that protect worker safety at those depths. Coal doesn't have a great worker safety record, either in mine explosion deaths, or long-term respiratory effects. But as long as the coal companies are able to dump waste into streams...

Trump then highlighted clearing the way to continue the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, despite concerns over possible water contamination if the Dakota pipeline, in particular, leaks or breaks deep underground, where it would be almost impossible to get to quickly. If you sense a trend that water isn't too important to these companies, the administration, or Republicans who've pushed for them, you're not having a stroke. These are the same people who think water is a commodity, designed for profit. So naturally, if these pipelines contaminate the water in any way, the biggest beneficiary is Nestle, who owns most of the world's water bottling companies. Their profits will rise as their water access rights become more valuable, and from the increase in demand for bottled water by communities who can't drink their own water.

Trump then discussed pulling from the "job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership." Not much of a job killer, really, since the TPP had yet to be ratified and implemented - a process that has now been delayed by the U.S. pulling out of it. And what it really did, was eliminate the only obstacle to China expanding it's trade dominion in Asia-Pacific, the main reason we were involved in the first place. But the president does a lot of business in China, whether or not that plays a part... who knows? The more relevant question is this: If China increases their market share of global trade, which would in turn increase their power and influence, how is Trump going to accomplish anything he wants to to with trade? There was a reason we were in the TPP.

Trump said he will reduce the corporate tax rate to prevent corporations from leaving the U.S. He also claimed he will provide massive tax relief for the middle class. He also criticized the tariffs and taxes U.S. exports are levied with, although he ignored that the tariffs aren't paid by the companies, they are passed on to the consumers. So when Harley Davidson, who Trump mentioned specifically, has their motorcycles taxed at 100%, a $22,000 Harley Davidson Fat Boy costs the foreign consumer $44,000. But the buyer pays it, not Harley Davidson.

IMMIGRATION
Standard Trump fare. He's ordered the Department of Justice to form a task force to reduce violent crime, and the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and National Intelligence to form an "aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread all across our nation." They are going to "stop the drugs from pouring into our country, poisoning our youth."

COOL. Although, we as a nation have seen how that plays out. The War on Drugs has been an abject failure. Drug imports have increased since it's inception. The only real effect has been on the private prison industry, who are only too happy to take in more inmates. The mandatory minimums are inherently racist, something Trump made no mention of. The biggest epidemics in drug consumption these days are pills, heroin, and meth-amphetamine, all of which are Made in America. A cynical person could see an ad campaign for American manufacturing in there somewhere... or maybe that's just me.

Trump then mentions that enforcing our immigration laws will "raise wages, help the unemployed, and save billions and billions of dollars." He neglects, of course, that raising wages kills jobs, according to the GOP, who have fought to keep wages from rising for anyone, making the immigration argument on that point somewhat moot. Then Trump lays down the boom with his "great great Wall along our southern border." Except immigration from Mexico is the lowest it's been in decades. Maybe that's due to all the manufacturing plants that have been built in major cities in Mexico, providing much needed jobs, and diminishes the need to cross our borders to look for work. Trump's economic plan, naturally, seeks to prevent American companies from opening plants in Mexico, demanding that they open plants in the U.S. instead. As is typical, Trump easily misses the forest for the tree. And all of this ignores that the radical Islamic terrorists he wants to keep out aren't going to come through Mexico, they're more likely to come through Canada - but there's no talk of a wall to the north.

It is not compassion, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting can not occur... we can not allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America, we can not allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.

So the United States will be on par with the Middle Eastern countries he hates, as countries who give sanctuary to terrorists, sounds great. Except the vetting process for Syrian refugees, for example, is already pretty stringent and lengthy. Bill Whitaker, correspondent for 60 Minutes, along with producer Katy Textor, went to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to illuminate the vetting process for refugees in the segment "Finding Refuge." In the segment, Whitaker spoke with Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, who insisted that we see these refugees are "fleeing the terrorists who killed their family members, who destroyed their houses. These are the victims that we are helping through our program."

• Mostly, the focus and priority is directed to victims of torture, survivors of violence, women-headed households, a lot of severe medical cases.
• First things first, they have to register with the United Nations. They are interviewed multiple times by the U.N. to get their vital statistics - in this case, where they came from, and who they know.
• Their irises are scanned to establish their identity.
• Then they wait for the chance the U.N. might refer them to the United States. Less than one percent have had that chance.
• For that one percent, the next step is the State Department resettlement center in Amman for a background check led by specially trained Department of Homeland Security interrogators. They are interviewed multiple times, with interviewers looking for gaps in their stories.
• All that information is then run though U.S. security databases for any red flags, a process that takes an average of 18-24 months. Those who pass are then told to pack up for their new life in the United States.

There has been a "surge operation" in effect, to try to perform all of the vetting in about three months, instead of 18-24. But the process is the same regardless of the time length, and only the smallest percentage of applicants make it all the way through the process to get the chance to come here. It's not just potential terrorists that are denied entry, harmless, innocent people are as well. Nonetheless, Trump suspended the vetting of Syrian refugees in his first Muslim ban attempt.

DRAINING THE SWAMP
This has been the catch phrase of Trump's campaign since the very beginning.

We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption, by imposing a five year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials, and a life time ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

Which is fine. But every time he says that, all I see is the lobbyists he hired to run the different divisions of his transition team, and the unqualified/interest-conflicted cronies that he appointed to run his Cabinet departments. I've said it before, the swamp is not draining, so much as bubbling vigorously.

OBAMACARE
Trump again promised to repeal the ACA, with no real plan to replace it. He did demand that they expand choice, increase access, lower cost, and at the same time, provide better health care. He called for preexisting conditions to have access to coverage, and a provision for the currently enrolled to have a stable transition from the exchanges. He urged the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to purchase the insurance plans people want, not the plan the government forces them to buy. Reasonable enough request, but he once again left out little details, like how poor people are supposed to save money in HSAs, when they exist paycheck to paycheck. Poor people do not save money. And tax credits are after the fact. Poor people would still have to have the money to buy coverage first. Again, poor people lack the resources, something a rich person like Trump, and most of Congress, seem cognitively dissonant to.

Trump also encouraged the provision of resources and flexibility with Medicaid for state governors to ensure no one is left out. State governors already have that, and a whole host of them rejected exchanges in their state, and refused to expand Medicaid. My hometown state of Florida is a prime example, with governor Rick Scott refusing to do anything to help Floridians get covered.

He then stated that legal reforms should be implemented to protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance; and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs immediately, to which he smiled and pointed to Bernie Sanders, who was sitting in the third row from the front, behind the Joint Chiefs. I imagine Sanders at least smirked back, because that has been one of his loudest complaints about our health care system, one that has fallen on deaf ears in the red light district of Congress. And one would presume that it's a sticking point where the president departs from the position of his party, which tends to protect the profits of Big Pharma. Trump then finished that section by endorsing insurance policy sales across state lines. This is a popular trope of the reds, who think free national markets everywhere will drop prices. But this, again, ignores the larger issue: Letting insurers shop for the state regulator of their choice can cause a lot of problems. Some industries already do it. Think credit card companies all being in South Dakota, Delaware being the state-side Bermuda of incorporation, New Jersey being the capital of debt collectors, etc. Insurers all end up in whatever state offers the weakest regulations. So a patient who gets sick could be screwed because comprehensive policies are few and far between, and consumer protections might be just as weak if something goes awry. Moreover, the local/regional network setups and price negotiations are costly to try to do locally for nationwide access. That is more of an impediment to interstate insurance sales than regulations. And Trump was either ignorant or coy when he mentioned his own company. Almost all big employers - and Trump, with his "thousands of employees" would be one - don't buy health insurance. They self-insure. Basically, once a company gets big enough, it's cheaper for them to cover the costs of health care, rather than pay premiums to someone else to cover their employees. And almost every major corporation does that, because it saves them tens of millions of dollars per year. So when they talk about employer health care benefits, ignore any statement on the subject from corporate bigwigs. They are in a different world. This is about small business and the self-employed.

EDUCATION
Trump highlighted Denisha Merriweather, who struggled in elementary school, until she was able to enroll in a private learning center with the help of tax credits and a scholarship program. She is now about to get her Masters degree from the University of South Florida. And she is an example of success with accessibility to other educational options. Merriweather stands as the light in the darkness of public education, or so Trump and new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would have us think. But in the real world, private charter schools have experienced higher rates of failing grades. In 2011, Florida had around 3,000 public schools and 350 charter schools. 31 schools received failing grades. Of those 31, 15 were charter schools. They accounted for 10% of the schools, but 48% of the failures.

It gets worse for vouchers. In the past 18 months, 3 major studies of voucher programs were conducted, one each in Indiana, Lousiana, and Ohio. In a New York Times :The Upshot article, New America's Kevin Carey reported on the results. In all three studies, voucher students fared worse in math and reading than students who remained in public schools. In the Louisiana study, the results were stark. In math, students weren't just worse, they were worse by half. Students in the 50th percentile in public school dropped to the 26th percentile in private school. The Times article came at the right time, as DeVos is a big proponent of school choice through voucher programs. The article did mention that there was a modest improvement in achievement in public schools that were voucher-eligible, hinting that competition from voucher schools might spur improvements in public schools. But for students to fare so badly across the board in the three states with the largest programs doesn't bode well for the viability of a national voucher system, to which Trump and DeVos have planned to dedicate $20 billion.

LAW ENFORCEMENT/MILITARY
The chamber went purple for Trump's avowed support for law enforcement and calls for unity between communities and their police officers. But moments later, groans were heard from the blue light district when Trump announced his Victims Against Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) program, essentially targeting immigrants who commit crimes for deportation. He highlighted Jameel Shaw, who lost his 17-year old son to a gang attack; Susan Oliver, with her daughter Jenna, and Jessica Davis, whose police officer husbands were gunned down by an immigrant who had two deportation notices against him.

Trump urged for the elimination of the defense spending sequester, enacted through the Budget Control Act of 2011, to increase defense spending, and increase funding for Veterans support services, which most Americans agree has been underwhelming for decades, and one of the few moments of purple support across the chamber. He pointed to Corrine Owens, whose Navy SEAL husband Ryan was killed in the Yemen raid. He also again touted the raid as an overwhelming success, yielding vast amounts of intelligence. Owens received the longest applause of the night.

Trump reasserted his intention to assure other countries are contributing to foreign efforts, both in forces and finances. He postured himself as only the representative of the United States, not the world. He ended the night with hope and confidence in the American spirit, where dreams can come true, and the re-establishment of American greatness begins.

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.