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Showing posts with label MOTHER JONES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MOTHER JONES. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Utah Study on Trans Youth Care Extremely Inconvenient for Politicians Who Ordered It

TRUMP, MAGA ET AL RAN ON 2 FALSE PLATFORMS: 

TRANSGENDER KIDS

UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS

THERE PLATFORMS ARE CRUMBLING....THEY AREN'T COMMENTING.... 



Utah Study on Trans Youth Care Extremely Inconvenient for Politicians Who Ordered It

The state’s ban on gender-affirming pediatric care “cannot be justified” by science, a two-year review concluded.

A mostly bald white man pursing his lips in a dark suit and yellow tie with an American flag lapel pin.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox listens to questions at a press conference, September 19, 2024.AP/Deseret News/Isaac Hale

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In 2022, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox was the rare Republican governor who seemed to truly care about the well-being of transgender kids. “I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live,” he wrote in a letter that year, explaining why he was vetoing a bill that would have banned four trans middle- and high schoolers in Utah from playing on sports teams with classmates who shared their gender identity. “All the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly.”

Meanwhile, nationally, Republican politicians were making opposition to trans rights a core tenet of their platforms, filing hundreds of bills attacking trans kids at the doctor’s officeat school, and on the field. Early in the 2023 legislative session, Cox capitulated, signing a bill that placed an indefinite “moratorium” on doctors providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans kids with gender dysphoria. The bill ordered the Utah health department to commission a systematic review of medical evidence around the treatments, with the goal of producing recommendations for the legislature on whether to lift the moratorium. “We sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” Cox said at the time.

Now, more than two years later, that review is here, and its conclusions unambiguously support gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. “The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data” on gender-affirming pediatric care, the authors wrote. “However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have lead us to the opposite conclusion.”

The medical evidence review, published on Wednesday, was compiled over a two-year period by the Drug Regimen Review Center at the University of Utah. Unlike the federal government’s recent report on the same subject, which was produced in three months and criticized gender-affirming pediatric treatments, the names of the Utah report’s contributors are actually disclosed on the more than thousand-page document.

The authors write:

The consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body
changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric [gender dysphoria] patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer…

It is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of [gender-affirming hormone therapy] for treatment of [gender dysphoria] in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria.

In a second part of their review, the authors looked specifically at long-term outcomes of patients who started treatment for gender dysphoria as minors:

Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes. While gender affirming treatment showed a possibly protective effect in prostate cancer in transgender men and breast cancer in transgender women, there was an increase in some specific types of benign brain tumors. There were increased mortality risks in both transgender men and women treated with hormonal therapy, but more so in transgender women. Increase risk of mortality was consistently due to increase in suicide, non-natural causes, and HIV/AIDS. Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult.

Submitted with the review was a set of recommendations—compiled by advisers from the state’s medical and professional licensing boards, the University of Utah, and a Utah non-profit hospital system—on steps the state legislature could take to ensure proper training among gender-affirming care providers, in the event it decides to lift the moratorium.

But according to the Salt Lake Tribune, legislators behind the ban are already dismissing the findings they asked for. In response to questions from the Tribune, Rep. Katy Hall, who co-sponsored the 2023 ban, issued a joint statement with fellow Republican state Rep. Bridger Bolinder, the chair of the legislature’s Health and Human Services Interim Committee, that dismissed the study’s findings. “We intend to keep the moratorium in place,” they told the Tribune. “Young kids and teenagers should not be making life-altering medical decisions based on weak evidence.”

Why ignore their own review? Polling, the legislators’ statement suggests. “Utah was right to lead on this issue, and the public agrees—polls show clear majority support both statewide and nationally,” Hall and Bolinder added in their statement. “Simply put, the science isn’t there, the risks are real, and the public is with us.”

Others, like former state Rep. Mike Kennedy, a co-sponsor of the 2023 ban who now represents Utah’s 3rd district in Congress, have so far been silent on the state review’s findings—as has Gov. Cox, who did not respond to the Salt Lake Tribune‘s request for comment.


MOTHER JONES: UTAH STUDY

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Don Jr. Caught Lying Under Oath in Inauguration Scandal Case and There’s Video PROOF

 


Don Jr. Caught Lying Under Oath in Inauguration Scandal Case and There's Video PROOF


Don Jr. Caught Lying Under Oath in Inauguration Scandal Case and There’s Video PROOF


To the District of Columbia’s district attorney’s office, they have stayed in their lane regarding what appears to have been a civil (as opposed to criminal) scheme to grab as much money from the non-profit 2016 Trump inauguration committee as possible. Of course, the Trumps used one of their favorite tools to move money. Pay themselves for their services from a non-profit. Sound familiar?

At issue is the event organized by Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff. You recall that Stephanie was Melania’s bff, and White House East-Wing employee until Melania and company was summarily dumped Stephanie overboard as soon as questions were asked about the funds. There are rumblings about a possible criminal investigation but the D.C. D.A. decided to go with a civil case to retrieve any non-profit funds used to secure a serious profit through exorbitant hotel pricing for rooms, some of which were not even used.

It was in this context in which Don Jr. was asked about his friendship or business relationship with Winston-Wolkoff. From here, we let Mother Jones pick up the coverage:

During his deposition, Trump Jr. was asked about Winston Wolkoff: “Do you know her?” He replied, “I know of her. I think I’ve met her, but I don’t know her. If she was in this room, I’m not sure I would recognize her.” He added, “I had no involvement with her.”

“…documents obtained by Mother Jones shows there’s evidence that Trump Jr.’s claim of having ‘no involvement’ with Winston Wolkoff was false,” writes Mother Jones’ David Corn. “On January 17, 2017, an assistant for Ivanka Trump texted Winston Wolkoff and said that Trump Jr. wanted to speak to her, providing Winston Wolkoff with his cell number.”

It appears that Mother Jones even has videotape proving the lie:

Yes. Well – that would seem to settle the matter, or at least be enough for a prosecutor to look at whether Donald Trump Jr. lied regarding what he knew and when. As Mother Jones put it:

This footage is from a tony candlelight dinner held at Union Station in Washington, DC, the night before Trump’s inauguration. This soiree was one of the official inauguration events. (A million-dollar contribution to the inauguration committee earned a Trump donor a ticket.) Here Trump Jr. can be seen profusely praising Barrack and Winston Wolkoff for the “incredible” work they did. It seems he did know her.

Yes, everyone’s favorite way of getting around tough questions in a deposition or in a criminal case is “I don’t recall,” and yet that only gets one so far. At some point, one may run into sufficient evidence to prove that the “I don’t recall… I don’t know her… I wouldn’t recognize her…” no longer works and this is especially true when there is tape. Good luck, Junior.

LINK


Evening Roundup, May 28...plus a special thank you to our Contrarian family

Evening Roundup, May 28...plus a special thank you to our Contrarian family Featuring Jen Rubin, Katherine Stewart, Brian O'Neill, Jenni...