President Trump has appointed noted anti-abortion activist Charmaine Yoest as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
News of Yoest’s appointment rankled congressional Democrats who balked at her past anti-abortion activism. Yoest, a senior fellow at American Values, is the former president of Americans United for Life, one of the groups behind state-level legislation to restrict abortion access.
Yoest’s appointment has raised eyebrows among abortion rights advocates because of her claims that abortions are linked to higher rates of breast cancer, that IUDs shorten a woman’s lifespan, and that there is no correlation between higher rates of contraception use and lower rates of abortion.
Yoest also kept her own blog, “Reasoned Audacity,” in which she made a number of anti-LGBTQ statements, with the bulk of her rage focused on the transgender community. In her many writings, Yoest has called transgender people “crazy,” “creatures,” frequently referred to chopping off one’s genitalia, and implied that medical care for transgender people (or as she refers to it, “the surgical removal of body parts”) is “a joke.”
Yoest has also promulgated the age-old trope of LGBTQ individuals as sexual predators, writing: “Parents should ask if McDonald’s will embrace open unisex restrooms where transgenders and transvestites and cross-dressers can have proximity to the wee ones.” In that same post, Yoest said she and her family would be boycotting McDonald’s because of the company’s support of LGBTQ equality.
Yoest’s position does not require Senate confirmation, meaning she was essentially ensured the position once Trump appointed her.
The National Center for Transgender Equality was aghast at Yoest’s appointment to HHS, which administers policies relating to transgender or transition-related medical care — which Yoest has specifically said she does not believe in.
“It’s almost as if President Trump is trying to find people who say the most mean, spiteful, hateful things about transgender people to fill roles in his administration,” Mara Kesiling, NCTE’s executive director, said in a statement.
Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a bill into law prohibiting Medicaid and state employee health plans from covering the cost of gender-affirming medications and procedures for low-income transgender adults and minors.
House Bill 668 declares that public funds "shall not reimburse or provide coverage for any surgical operation or medical intervention...for purposes of altering the appearance of an individual in order to affirm the individual's perception of the individual's sex in a way that is inconsistent with the individual's biological sex."
The bill contains exemptions for certain types of surgical operations or medical interventions, such as those deemed medically necessary; those meant to force intersex people or those with "a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development" to conform to binary bodily stereotypes; and those used to help a person "de-transition" or to treat an "infection, injury, disease or disorder that has been caused or exacerbated by" gender-affirming surgery.
Billionaire X CEO Elon Musk said that gay people should have children to ensure the "continuance of civilization."
Musk recently posted a set of political positions he holds, which he claimed were "centrist." They read like a laundry list of conservative views, including opposition to unfettered immigration, large amounts of government spending, and opposition to allowing minors to access gender-affirming medical treatments.
"My positions are centrist," Musk wrote. "Secure borders. Safe & clean cities. Don't bankrupt America with spending. Racism against any race is wrong. No sterilization below age of consent."
On my last day of junior high, my stepfather, my mother and I packed up the cars and drove south from Northern Virginia to Pasco County, Florida. The cultural adjustments were significant in both number and magnitude. For example, when we moved into Embassy Hills, I was 14 and easily the youngest person on our flat Florida block of single-story stucco homes. I believe my mother, at 52, was the youngest adult.
Prior to Pasco, my experience with very old adults had been limited mostly to senior relatives at family gatherings. My stepfather's retirement, however, put me squarely in their world. Early bird dinners, senior discounts, and mall walkers became fixtures in my new life.
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