The GOP's Nationwide Attack on Trans Kids
Republicans won't vote for COVID relief, but they'll regulate children's genitals! | #TC90
Welcome to Third Cultured – a foreign policy and LGBTQIA+ politics newsletter – published by yours truly, Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight the unique role Queer people play in the politics of the United States and the world-at-large.
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This edition:
Commentary
Hot Spots
Commentary
Yesterday marked one year since the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
The US is administering more than 2 million shots per day – globally, 313 million shots having been given in 118 countries – and Biden announced that all states and tribal authorities must designate all adults for vaccines by May 1.
Meanwhile, Biden and company continue its full-court PR blitz – “Help is Here” – to capitalize on the $1.9 trillion relief package they passed through Congress. The administration firmly believes the shellacking Obama and Democrats received in 2010 was due to a failure to sell the American public on what was in his 2009 financial recovery package. (They even launched a website for it.)
It’s not just America that will benefit from the massive stimulus package either.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projected the $1.9 trillion will add a full percentage point to global economic growth in 2021 as the US economy rebounds quickly, pulling Canada and Mexico up with us in particular. It is expected the US in 2021 is what China played in the 2008-2009 recovery. (Side note: I expect we’ll see renewered interest in a North American equivalent to the EU over the next decade as competition increases with the Eurasian giants.)
On the international front, there’s not as much change from one admin to the next.
Biden is still playing chicken with Iran. And, Afghanistan. And, Venezuela. And, Syria. Although, I have to applaud granting Temporary Protected Status to the estimated 320,000 Venezuelans in the US who fled the nation’s economic travesty under US sanctions. With Myanmar, where the military junta is killing dozens of civilians per day, the Quad is seeing if it has any juice as an organization now that it’s formalized.
Back at home, on the state level, leftists in Nevada took over the state’s Democratic Party, and all the centrists jumped ship immediately. So much for “Democrats stick together.” On the other side of the aisle, the GOP is targeting trans kids in 80+ bills nationwide trying to ban trans people from participating in women’s sports. It’s the latest in a long-line of contrived cultural wars from the Right, but these recent hysterics have caught on with a quickness because of everyone’s irrational “save the children” reflexes. It’s nothing new. From their blatant lies to the very real damage these laws will have on trans kids everywhere they’re allowed to pass.
The most pathetic aspect of it all is the “controversy” is being stirred up by a mediocre white girl – who placed 6th and 8th in the two races she’s angry over two trans girls beat her in – and her mother who likes her regular segment on Fox News.
In a cruel twist of irony, Texas already forced a trans boy to wrestle in the gender he was assigned at birth – meaning they forced him to compete against girls rather than the boys he wanted to compete against – and he won every year! It’d be shocking if it wasn’t so par for the course for conservatives to create the very realities they’re so afraid of, but put zero effort into educating themselves beyond their guts.
Unsurprisingly, Mississippi was the first to sign one into law this week.
Alabama, a state that’s failed to bring a lottery to its borders despite trying every year for more than 21 years, is prioritizing its own anti-trans bill that will make providing puberty blockers a felony. Even creating a public panel that will monitor children’s genitals to ensure they’re the proper gender. What could possibly go wrong there?!
Will any of these laws make it through the courts? Unlikely.
But, the GOP will waste millions in taxpayer dollars regardless to maintain the outcry they worked so hard to conjure in the first place.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Here are some great reads worth your time.
'A reckoning is near': America has a vast overseas military empire. Does it still need it? (USA Today) (Graphic: Costs of War)
A Superpower, Like It or Not (Foreign Affairs)
Destroying Alex Morse (The Flashpoint)
Donate to the LGBT Rights Ghana Community Support Fund! (GoFundMe)
Future History: The Sino-American War of 2025 (The Spectator)
How social networks got competitive again (Platformer)
Pete Buttigieg Is Bootleg Obama in the Worst Ways Possible (Jacobin)
Still, the real issue with Trust stems from the broadness and therefore ultimate thinness of its central conceit. To be fair to Buttigieg, his stated aims for the book are fairly narrow. “Trust,” as he writes in its introduction, “is not a sweeping account of how we got here, or a full assessment of what it is to be alive and American in 2020 . . . Rather [it] is written in the spirit of what must come next.” The problem is that, in Buttigieg’s hands, the idea of “trust” comes to apply to so much that it works more like a crude framing device than a vehicle for genuine insight.
Please Just Let Women Be Villains (Electric Lit)
The Deep Rot of the Massachusetts Democratic Party (The New Republic)
As expected, the UMass report confirms what I’ve said since this began: that I have never violated Title IX or any UMass employment policy. I hope this lays to rest the unnecessary and invasive intrusion into my personal life.Report: Mayor Morse did not violate UMass Amherst policy as adjunct professor https://t.co/AZdSkmPzoj
WWLP-22News @WWLP22NewsThe Demise and Potential Revival of the American Chestnut (Sierra)
The Miseducation of America’s Elites (City Journal)
The (Semi-Hidden) History of Queer Pregnancy in Literature (LitHub)
U.S. Territories: The Frontlines of Global Competition With China (RCD)
We Need to Put a Name to This Violence (NYTimes)
Where Have All the Houses Gone? (NYTimes)
For more than a decade, less housing has been built relative to historical averages. The housing crash decimated the home building industry and pushed many construction workers into other jobs. Local building restrictions and neighbor objections have slowed new construction. President Trump’s strict immigration policies further restricted the labor supply in the industry, and his tariffs pushed up the price of building materials.
“If the Biden administration did this in retaliation to what happened in Iraq because they believe the Iranians are escalating in order to pressure the U.S. back into the deal, then that in and of itself is making clear the dangers of not going back into the deal. Why don’t we just go back in the deal? That seems to resolve these issues much better.”
“I understand that they think they need to show this resolve—so no one thinks that they’re weak—but that, in my view, signals weakness. Because if you’re strong you don’t need to do this kind of signaling. And it worries me that they already feel so pressured that they have to do this.”
– Trita Parsi, executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says the tit-for-tat escalation and deescalation between the US and Iran is needlessly complex.
Hot Spots
2022 Senate Races: GOP senator retirements mix up the 2022 map. (Graphic: WaPo)
American Infrastructure: Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure, with a focus on expanding sustainable projects like high-speed rail, including $50 billion on immediate road and bridge repairs, and carbon free power generation by 2035. Like with COVID relief, Democrats want to pass the bill with bipartisan support but Senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT) already voiced he’s prepared to pass an infrastructure bill through budget reconciliation if the GOP gets sticker shock. One bill already in play wants to spend $205 billion to build a high-speed rail network that would “create at least 2.6 million new jobs and connecting city pairs that in some cases airlines have abandoned.” The U.S. has $5.9 trillion in infrastructure funding needs up to 2029 with $3.35 trillion in place. (Graphic: Statista)
Armenia: The prime minister successfully stopped a coup attempt after anger over his handling of the war with Azerbaijan boiled over. Russia and the US stand by the PM.
Biden’s Pivot to Asia The Quad’s first ever leader-level summit between the US, India, Australia, and Japan are being held on Friday, March 12 as Beijing’s worries that the grouping will crystalize into an all-encompassing anti-China alliance grows. (Worse for China, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines want in, too.) India also isn’t happy to find out China took a page out of Moscow’s cyberwar book and went after Delhi’s power grid. In contrast, the Biden administration will have its first high-level meetings with China on March 18 in Alaska where Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Yang Jiechi, the director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss the “Trinity of Hope” – climate, health, and people-to-people exchanges.
Bolsonaro vs Lula in Brazil 2022: Former leftist president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva’s corruption conviction from 2018 was overturned by a Brazilian court, clearing the way for him to challenge right-wing Trump of the Tropics, President Bolsonaro, in 2022.
CCP’s 100th Anniversary: Xi declared the Party’s “won the war on poverty.”
Politically of course victory is incredibly valuable to the Party as it celebrates its 100th anniversary, and to Xi Jinping personally. Mao and Deng didn't eradicate poverty, Xi and his third Era of CCP rule did.
Xi has had quite a good run since the beginning of the 2020, from orchestrating victory in a "people's war" over COVID-19 to winning this war on poverty, to the disastrous management of the pandemic in the West and political dysfunction and near chaos in the US. The Party history campaign that Xi just launched should further elevate his standing. Amidst all the risks, real and imagined, that the Party keeps talking about, Xi also sees massive opportunities.
Central America: Hunger in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has increased by 400% since 2018 because of food insecurity due to a series of major hurricanes, the covid pandemic, and a climate change-related drought.
Cherokee Nation: Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, formally requested Jeep cease using the tribe’s name for its Grand Cherokee vehicle. This is the first time the Cherokee have made the request and Jeep is (unsurprisingly) resistant.
CPAC: Trump declared total control over the GOP at this year’s conference and remains the “presumptive 2024 nomine.” He also laid out his plan for endorsements (aka how he intends to pick the winners and losers of conservative politics).
Israel elections: The nation will hit the polls for a fourth time in two years on March 23, with a battle on the Right to decide if Bibi survives to fight another day.
Russia and China Head to Moon: Beijing and Moscow announced their plans to build a joint base on the lunar surface.
Solar Winds Hack: The House Homeland Security Committee called on Congress to implement five key steps needed to increase federal cybersecurity in the future, including centralizing authority at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, stepping up vendor certification, and “imposing real costs” on adversary nations responsible for malicious cyber activities.
Xinjiang: The Netherlands passed a non-binding motion declaring the treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, China amounts to genocide. The Dutch are the first European nation to make such a move, and an independent examination determined China breached the 1948 Genocide Convention with its treatment of the Uyghurs. Relatedly, China is prepared to fill the America-sized vacuum in Afghanistan in order to prevent terrorism from spilling over the nation’s shared (albeit small) land border. I say let them be superpower victim #4!
