The Four Men Responsible For America’s COVID-19 Disaster

Trump, Azar and Redfield.

With a majority of states now "reopening" their economies, millions of Americans remain unemployed or furloughed and it is unclear when the economy will full recover - some analysts point to late 2021. In this state, the question becomes why was the United States so ill prepared and why was the national response bungled so badly?  A very long piece in Rolling Stone looks at the disastrous federal response and names four individuals as ultimately to blame, starting with Donald Trump who has always treated the pandemic as a PR and political issue rather than a public health emergency.  While Trump set the tone, the disaster was compounded by his appointees who were picked based on ideology and/or ties to far right Christians rather than for the true expertise and competence. In making these flawed appointments, Trump was following both GOP ideology and pandering to leading Christofascists.  The results have proven deadly for tens of thousands of Americans.  Here are highlights from the article which is an indictment of Trump and ultimately the GOP "small government" agenda and obsession with funding cuts to finance tax cuts for the very wealthy (read the entire piece):  

Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, flanked Donald Trump at the podium in the White House briefing room. It was February 29th, the day of the first reported U.S. death from the coronavirus, and [Trump] the president fielded an urgent question: “How should Americans prepare for this virus?” a reporter asked. “Should they go on with their daily lives? Change their routine? What should they do?”

A tall man, with a tan, freckled head, and a snow-white chinstrap beard, Redfield stepped to the podium. “The risk at this time is low,” Redfield told the country. “The American public needs to go on with their normal lives.”

This reassurance came at precisely, and tragically, the wrong time. With a different answer, much of the human devastation that was about to unfold in the United States would have been avoidable. Academic research from Imperial College in London, modeling the U.S. response, estimates that up to 90 percent of COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented had the U.S. moved to shut down by March 2nd. Instead, administration leaders dragged their feet for another two weeks, as the virus continued a silent, exponential assault. By early May, more than 75,000 Americans were dead.

Even as he spoke, Redfield knew the country should be taking a different course. The Coronavirus Task Force had resolved to present the president with a plan for mitigation efforts, like school and business closures, on February 24th, but reportedly reversed course after Trump exploded about the economic fallout. Instead, the CDC director continued touting “aggressive containment” to Congress on February 27th.

Experts tell Rolling Stone that ship had sailed when the virus made the leap from infected travelers into the general public. “If you’ve got a community spreading respiratory virus, it’s not going to be containable,” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “You have to shift to mitigation right away.”

Patty Murray is the ranking member of the Senate’s top health committee, and represents Washington state, the nation’s first coronavirus hot spot. She blames the administration for a delay that “overwhelmed the health care system and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.” And she singles out Redfield, in particular, for “dereliction of duty.”

“We had ample notice to get our country ready,” says Ron Klain, who served as President Obama’s Ebola czar, and lists the rolling out of testing, securing protective equipment, and building up hospital capacity as necessary preventative steps. “We spent all of January and February doing none of those things, and as a result, when this disease really exploded  in March, we weren’t prepared.”

The government leaders who failed to safeguard the nation are CDC Director Redfield; FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn; Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar; and of course, President Trump. Together, these men had the power to change the direction of this pandemic, to lessen its impact on the economy, and constrain the death toll from COVID-19. Each failed, in a series of errors and mismanagement that grew into a singular catastrophe — or as Jared Kushner described it on Fox & Friends, “a great success story.”

Precious weeks slipped by — amid infighting, ass covering, and wasted effort — and the virus slipped through the nation’s crippled surveillance apparatus, taking root in hot spots across the country, and in particular, New York City.

The mismanagement cost lives. With adequate testing from the beginning, says Dr. Howard Forman, a Yale professor of public-health policy, “we would have been able to stop the spread of this virus in its tracks the way that many other nations have.” Instead, says Sen. Murray, the administration’s response was “wait until it’s too late, and then try and contain one of the most aggressive viruses that we’ve ever seen.”

Blind to the virus’s penetration and unable to target mitigation where it was needed, the administration and state governors had to resort to the blunt instrument of shuttering the economy, says Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. And the lack of testing kept us in limbo. “Our economy is shut down because we still do not have adequate testing,” Jha says. “We have been woefully behind from the beginning of this pandemic.”

If the president’s deputies made trillion-dollar mistakes, accountability for the pandemic response lies with Trump, who waived off months of harrowing intelligence briefings, choosing to treat the coronavirus as a crisis in public relations, rather than a public-health emergency. Having staked his re-election on a strong economy, Trump downplayed the virus.

The front-line agency built to respond to a pandemic, the CDC, was placed in unreliable hands. Dr. Robert Redfield is a right-wing darling with a checkered scientific past. His 2018 nomination was a triumph for the Christian right, a coup in particular for evangelical activists Shepherd and Anita Smith, who have been instrumental in driving a global AIDS strategy centered on abstinence.

Redfield championed discriminatory policies that he defended as “good medicine” — including quarantining of HIV-positive soldiers in a segregated barracks. These soldiers were routinely given dishonorable discharges after superiors rooted out evidence of homosexuality, and left to suffer the course of their devastating disease without health insurance.

When his CDC appointment was announced in March 2018, Sen. Murray warned of Redfield’s “pattern of ethically and morally questionable behavior,” as well as his “lack of public-health expertise,” and urged Trump to “reconsider.” But the CDC post does not require Senate approval. Redfield sought to reassure CDC staff that his views had modernized, and that he now embraced condoms to slow HIV infection.

The CDC reports to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Alex Azar, a former executive for the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly who gained infamy, in his five-year tenure, by doubling the price of insulin.

Azar is a creature of the GOP establishment: He cut his teeth as a Supreme Court clerk to Antonin Scalia, worked with Brett Kavanaugh on the Clinton-Whitewater investigation under special counsel Ken Starr, and served as a deputy HHS administrator in the George W. Bush era, before becoming Eli Lilly’s top lobbyist.

Azar sought to shrink the CDC, an agency that has been on the chopping block throughout the Trump administration. In HHS’s most recent budget proposal — unveiled this past February, 10 days after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the coronavirus — Azar sought an $85 million cut to the CDC’s Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases program and a $25 million cut to Public Health Preparedness and Response. Azar defended the budget at the time as making “difficult, prudent choices.”

The Trump administration had also hollowed out the CDC’s China presence, slashing staff from 47 to barely a dozen. These cuts were part of a broad-reaching drawdown of America’s disease preparedness, including Trump’s decision to disband the National Security Counsel’s pandemic-response team.

Stephen Hahn had been on the job at the FDA for barely a month. A bald, 60-year-old of modest height, Hahn has an impeccable résumé — he served as chief medical executive at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center — but he had no experience running a government agency.

The need to engage the private sector for coronavirus testing was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen — by Trump’s first FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb. In a January 28th Wall Street Journal article, “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” Gottlieb warned that the “CDC will struggle to keep up with the volume of screening.” He said the government must begin “working with private industry to develop easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic tests.”

If Hahn read his predecessor’s call to action, he did not act on it. . . . . Yet the failure to activate the private sector was the key difference between the U.S. response to the coronavirus and that of South Korea, which first detected the virus in its country at the same time the U.S. did. “Instead of going through regulatory hijinks,” says Milton, the University of Maryland virologist, South Korea “turned their biomedical industry loose, and they started producing lots of tests right away.”

The testing breakdown had left the nation blind to the true scope of the outbreak. By March 1st, the CDC’s official tally of coronavirus cases had spiked from the 15 cases touted by Trump to 75. But researchers at Northeastern University have now developed models showing there were likely 28,000 infections at the time, in just five major cities, including New York and Seattle.

Having plunged the nation headlong and unprepared into the deadliest disease outbreak in a century, President Trump is now proving to be one of the greatest obstacles to an effective national response.

Sebelius ultimately blames Trump for failing to end the infighting and fix the testing failure. “The White House has a unique way to get agencies’ attention, by making it clear that they want a solution, and everybody at the table with that solution within 24 hours,” she says. “If the president wants this to happen, it will happen.” But on his visit to the CDC in Atlanta, Trump had made an extraordinary admission: That he did not want to let passengers from a cruise ship, then suffering an outbreak off the California coast, to come on shore because the tally of patients would rise. “I like the numbers being where they are,” Trump said.

Trump plainly saw effective testing as a threat to his political messaging that the administration was containing the virus. By standing at CDC headquarters to declare that the tests were “perfect” and that he didn’t want COVID-19 numbers going up, the president was doing the exact opposite of demanding a fix. For the president’s deputies, Sebelius says, “there couldn’t be a clearer signal.”

In the event that Trump is still president when a vaccine becomes available, Sebelius argues that the loose confederations that have formed in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific states to coordinate their reopenings may need to band together in a shadow government to sidestep Trump. “Maybe governors will put together their own system,” she says, “and ignore what’s happening in the White House.”

Again, read the entire piece.

Trump's Ass Backwards Approach to Stopping the HIV Epidemic

In addition to the scandal of allowing Gilead raking in billions of dollars and imposing astronomical prices for PrEP, a totally government and charity developed drug, the Trump/Pence regime is moving to slash funding to family planning clinics that provide free HIV testing to the poor, including poor women who increasingly make up those being diagnosed with the virus.  The Trump/Pence motivation is simple: attack family planning clinics to please the anti-abortion Christofascists who remain the regime's most loyal base of support.  Never mind that abortion services/referrals are offered by only a small percentage of such clinics which often provide the only means of medical treatment for the poor - a group that Trump despises, especially those who are non-white. Such ass backward actions reveal the disingenuous nature of Trump's claim he wants to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.  A piece in Politico looks at the damage the Trump/Pence approach will do to stopping the rate of HIV infections (which is the worse in the South/Bible Belt).  Here are excerpts:

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report detailing the state of the HIV epidemic in the United States. One finding stood out: Nearly 40 percent of new HIV transmissions come from a relatively small group of people who don’t know they have the virus.

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump announced an initiative to end the HIV epidemic in our country by 2030. . . . . There’s just one problem: The Trump administration is also cutting funding to many of the safety net medical clinics that do a significant number of these tests.

One reason that some Americans don’t know they have HIV is that they lack access to routine health care. While millions of people have gained access to health care through Obamacare or the expansion of Medicaid that accompanied it, there remains a significant coverage gap in states that decided not to expand Medicaid, and it’s those states, many of them in the South, which have the highest rates of HIV infection.

For the more than 2.5 million poor, uninsured Americans who cannot get Medicaid or any financial support to purchase Obamacare, one of the only remaining places they can get health care, including low-cost or free HIV testing, is at so-called Title X clinics.

The Title X Family Planning Program was enacted by Congress in 1970 and it is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing all individuals, regardless of their ability to pay, with family planning and related preventive health services including HIV testing. In establishing Title X, Congress made clear that its major goal was to “decrease adverse health and financial effects on children, women, and their families of inadequately spaced childbearing” by providing information, access to birth control and preventative health services. For nearly 50 years, this government-funded program has greatly improved access to vital medical care for millions of low-income, uninsured people.

Currently, there are nearly 4,000 Title X-funded family planning clinics across the U.S., and they serve approximately 4 million people each year. In addition to providing family planning services like low-cost or free birth control, Title X clinics also provide low-income men and women with services such as free testing for HIV, other sexually transmitted infections, and breast and cervical cancer screening.

[N]early half a million men also receive care in these clinics each year, mostly driven by their need for testing services. In 2017 alone, Title X clinics performed 1,192,119 confidential HIV tests, resulting in 2,195 new HIV diagnoses.

Another key component of Trump’s plan is to focus on geographic HIV hotspots. The Southern U.S. is the current epicenter of the national HIV epidemic; Southern states account for over half of new HIV diagnoses despite having only 37 percent of the population. This is particularly true for women; of all U.S. women recently diagnosed with HIV, 56 percent were living in the South. In fact, my home state of Georgia has the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in the country.

In states like Georgia that did not expand Medicaid, Title X clinics serve as the sole source of heath care for the majority of their female clients.

Sadly though, the administration announced in February changes to Title X that will result in cutting funding to a sizable portion of family planning clinics. The motivation for these cuts is purely political, with the singular goal of removing Planned Parenthood and other medical clinics that provide abortions or refer patients for abortions out of the Title X network within the coming months. As it happens, only 13 percent of all Title X clinics are operated by Planned Parenthood, and an additional 26 percent are nonprofit, community-based family planning clinics, many of which may be in jeopardy of losing funding as well.

Title X funds have never been allowed to pay for abortions, but the new rule will cut funding to family planning clinics solely because they provide or refer patients elsewhere for abortions. Due to the loss of federal funds, some of these vital safety net clinics may close, others will have to lay off staff and reduce hours, and many may have to reduce services—like HIV testing—in order to offset costs.

Rather than dismantling Title X clinics, the Trump administration should leverage and expand on the important role that this network of family planning clinics has always played in providing HIV testing to the 4 million people they serve each year.

I]t’s time to increase funding to family planning clinics to expand HIV testing, not decrease access to HIV testing through politically motivated efforts that may result in the closing of vital safety net clinics.

As always, actions speak louder than words and Trump's actions send a message to the poorest Americans: just get sick and die.

Climate Denial Was a GOP Staple Long Before Trump

At the recent G 20 Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of the twenty (20) foreign leaders, Donald Trump was the only one to not sign a communique on climate change.  Trump's refusal was no surprise to anyone who has followed his (and Mike Pence's) regime to roll back environmental protection laws not to mention withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement. Trump's motivations are, in my view, two fold: (i) Trump's desire to appeal to workers in the moribund coal industry - coal use has reached a 40 year low - and the fossil fuel industry in general, and (ii) Trump's desire appeal to the climate change/scientific knowledge deniers among the Christofascist base to which Trump (and Pence) have prostituted himself.  Yet, as a column in the New York Times notes, Trump's approach is in reality merely a continuation of the long GOP denial of scientific knowledge in general and climate change in particular.  Why the GOP intransigence?  See the two reasons set above that have motivated the GOP before the rise of Trump.  Lastly, how is scientific knowledge so cavalierly rejected by the GOP?  Simple: it's all a conspiracy by scientists.  Here are column highlights: 

Many observers seem baffled by Republican fealty to Donald Trump — the party’s willingness to back him on all fronts, even after severe defeats in the midterm elections. What kind of party would show such support for a leader who is not only evidently corrupt and seemingly in the pocket of foreign dictators, but also routinely denies facts and tries to criminalize anyone who points them out?

The answer is, the kind of the party that, long before Trump came on the scene, committed itself to denying the facts on climate change and criminalizing the scientists reporting those facts.

The G.O.P. wasn’t always an anti-environment, anti-science party. George H.W. Bush introduced the cap-and-trade program that largely controlled the problem of acid rain. As late as 2008, John McCain called for a similar program to limit emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

But McCain’s party was already well along in the process of becoming what it is today — a party that is not only completely dominated by climate deniers, but is hostile to science in general, that demonizes and tries to destroy scientists who challenge its dogma.

Trump fits right in with this mind-set. In fact, when you review the history of Republican climate denial, it looks a lot like Trumpism. Climate denial, you might say, was the crucible in which the essential elements of Trumpism were formed.

Take Trump’s dismissal of all negative information about his actions and their consequences as either fake news invented by hostile media or the products of a sinister “deep state.” That kind of conspiracy theorizing has long been standard practice among climate deniers,  . . . What was the evidence for this vast conspiracy? A lot of it rested on, you guessed it, hacked emails. The credulousness of all too many journalists about the supposed misconduct revealed by “Climategate,” a pseudo-scandal that relied on selective, out-of-context quotes from emails at a British university, prefigured the disastrous media handling of hacked Democratic emails in 2016.

The truth is that most prominent climate deniers are basically paid to take that position, receiving large amounts of money from fossil-fuel companies. But after the release of the recent National Climate Assessment detailing the damage we can expect from global warming, a parade of Republicans went on TV to declare that scientists were only saying these things “for the money.” Projection much?

[C]limate scientists have faced harassment and threats, up to and including death threats, for years. And they’ve also faced efforts by politicians to, in effect, criminalize their work. Most famously, Michael E. Mann, creator of the famous “hockey stick” graph, was for years the target of an anti-climate science jihad by Ken Cuccinelli, at the time Virginia’s attorney general.

And on it goes. Recently a judge in Arizona, responding to a suit from a group linked to the Koch brothers (and obviously not understanding how research works), ordered the release of all emails from climate scientists at the University of Arizona. To forestall the inevitable selective misrepresentation, Mann has released all the emails he exchanged with his Arizona colleagues, with explanatory context.

There are three important morals to this story.

First, if we fail to meet the challenge of climate change, with catastrophic results — which seems all too likely — it won’t be the result of an innocent failure to understand what was at stake. It will, instead, be a disaster brought on by corruption, willful ignorance, conspiracy theorizing and intimidation.

Second, that corruption isn’t a problem of “politicians” or the “political system.” It’s specifically a problem of the Republican Party, which has burrowed ever deeper into climate denial even as the damage from a warming planet becomes more and more obvious.

Third, we can now see climate denial as part of a broader moral rot. Donald Trump isn’t an aberration, he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for years.

Trump/Pence Regime Ends Diplomatic Visas for UN Same-Sex Partners

Since taking office, Donald Trump, Mike Pence and their minions Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos have waged an unceasing war on LGBT Americans, keeping Trump's frightening promises to Christofascist leaders in June, 2016.  If confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh would likely use his position on the Supreme Court to further rescind rights and protections for LGBT Americans.  But Trump/Pence is not limiting its attacks to LGBT Americans.  Now, partners of LGBT diplomats to the United Nations will lose their visas if they are not legally married.  The move is not motivated by a desire to encourage same-sex marriage, but rather to force such partners from the USA since many countries still do not permit same sex marriage.  A piece in the BBC looks at this foul move which will make Christofascist hate merchants happy.  Never under estimate the cruelty and pettiness of Trump/Pence and its Christofascist supporters.   Here are story excerpts:

The US has announced it will deny diplomatic visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees.  The change went into effect on Monday, giving partners currently in the US until 31 December to leave, get married or otherwise change their visa. It is a reversal of rules introduced in 2009.

Currently, 25 countries have recognised same-sex marriage. Homosexuality remains illegal in 71 countries.

The new Trump administration policy update was circulated in a United Nations (UN) memo. The memo states: "As of 1 October 2018, same-sex domestic partners accompanying or seeking to join newly arrived United Nations officials must provide proof of marriage to be eligible for a G-4 visa or to seek a change into such status." G-4 visas are granted to employees of international organisations and their immediate families.

According to the State Department, "only a relationship legally considered to be a marriage in the jurisdiction where it took place establishes eligibility as a spouse for immigration purposes".

[C]ritics have called the move unfair to homosexual partners, given a large number of countries do not recognise same-sex marriage. Former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power decried the policy, calling it "needlessly cruel and bigoted".

The UN-Globe, advocates for LGBT equality in the UN, said the Trump administration's new policy was "an unfortunate change in rules".

"Couples already inside of the United States could go to city hall and get married. But they could potentially be exposed to prosecution if they return to a country that criminalises homosexuality or same-sex marriages."

After the end of this year, unmarried same-sex partners of diplomats and UN employees will be expected to leave the US within 30 days if they remain unmarried and without a visa status change.

The only exception, however, would be same-sex partners of officials coming from countries that do not recognise same-sex marriage. They will be granted a diplomatic visa if the government which sends them to work in their embassies in the US grants the same privileges to same-sex partners of US officials sent to that country.

The new policy is a reversal of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2009 decision to allow same-sex domestic partners of foreign officials diplomatic visas.  State Department officials say there are around 105 families total that could be affected by the policy.

Akshaya Kumar, the Deputy UN Director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that the change "will have an insidious impact on same-sex couples".  "The US government should recognise, as it had for almost nine years until today, that requiring a marriage as proof of bona fide partnership is a bad and cruel policy, one that replicates the terrible discrimination many LGBT people face in their own countries, and should be immediately reversed."

Trump: Pentagon Has Six Months to Create New Transgender Military Ban

Der  Trumpenführer mad many campaign promises.  To date he has delivered on very few of them.  There is one glaring exception to this do nothing situation: the assault on LGBT rights that was made to a who's who of American Christofascists in June, 2016, in New York City.  With the aid of extreme homophobes Jeff Sessions and Betsy De Vos, already protections of LGBT students are  under assault and LGBT protections put in place by the Obama administration have been rescinded. Now, following up on his anti-transgender tweets, Der  Trumpenführer  has issued a directive to the Pentagon giving it six months to formulate a new ban on transgender members of the U.S. military. The Los Angeles Blade has some details on the development (note two things: Mike Pence has been the driving force behind the ban and how the state of California may be positioning itself to oppose the ban).  Here are highlights:

White House guidance on the transgender military service ban President Trump ordered via tweet July 26 is headed to the Pentagon, as soon as Thursday afternoon or possibly Friday morning, a senior White House source told the Los Angeles Blade.

The Guidance has been boiled down to a 2½-page memo that directs Defense Sec. Mattis to come up with a policy in six months, stop spending money on transgender-related medical treatment for active duty trans servicemembers and gauges fitness for service based on “deployability”—whether the trans individual can ably serve in a war zone and engage in military exercises or function a ship for months, officials told the Wall Street Journal. 

That guidance was also watered down from the complete ban Trump ordered to one that would allow active duty trans service members to continue serving after even Republicans opposed the policy change. The weakened policy requires that recruitment and the accessions policy be halted (they are now), enlistment contracts not be renewed, promotions result in discharges, and transgender-specific healthcare be prohibited.

At an Aug. 14 news conference, Mattis indicated support for trans service members, noting the United States Armed Forces is “a widely diverse force. We look at E Pluribus Unum on our coins. Out of many, one. They were simply emphasizing on the battlefield we are one team and that’s the way we stay.”

It has now been widely reported that Mattis quietly intervened to scotch efforts by anti-LGBT Reps. Duncan Hunter and Vicky Hartzler to get a version of the trans ban passed through Congress. Nor did he object when Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the current policy of open service would remain in effect until it is formally replaced or when Navy Secretary Spencer said “any patriot” should be allowed to serve, echoing other commanders supporting their trans service members.

However, Mattis also noted that the military chain of command requires him to follow orders given by the civilian commander-in-chief.

The White House senior official source — who spoke to the Blade on condition of anonymity — said Vice President Mike Pence is the driving force behind the ban. In fact, he has been spearheading the trans ban reinstatement since last May, at the behest of conservative leaders such as Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, and scores of retired anti-LGBT military officers.

Trump’s fear of his evangelical base is more powerful than his promises to the LGBT community, justifying the ban by saying: “It’s been a very difficult situation and I think I’m doing a lot of people a favor by coming out and just saying it. As you know, it’s been a very complicated issue for the military, it’s been a very confusing issue for the military, and I think I’m doing the military a great favor.”

Fact check: an estimated 6,000 trans service members have been serving openly without incident since the original ban was lifted by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter in July 2016, after a year of study and deliberation.

News of the ban prompted the California Legislative LGBT Caucus to introduce a Resolution saying California would protect its own trans service members. California is home to more than 190,000 active and reserve service people on three army bases, seven marine bases, 10 navy bases, six air force bases and five reserve and numerous U.S. Coast Guard bases.[A]t the end of the resolution, the Caucus notes what could prove to be a wrinkle in Trump’s plan. “Resolved, That the Legislature of the State of California calls upon the Governor of California to direct the California National Guard, the California Air National Guard, and the other Armed Forces of the state to take no action that discriminates against transgender service members in enlistment, promotion, or any other aspect of their service, on the basis of their gender identity or expression, unless superseded by federal law, regulation, or formal directive from the United States Department of Defense.”

But what happens if and when transgender members of the state National Guard are called up and federalized? Low’s office says they are looking into that. AJR 22 will be heard on the Assembly floor in the coming weeks. 

Every individual who voted for Trump/Pence or stayed home and failed to vote against Trump bears responsibility for this assault of the civil rights of other Americans.  These people will find no forgiveness from me.  They deliberately harmed my community and threaten my civil rights. 

Trump's Transgender Military Ban is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" All Over Again.

Among the countless disgusting things that Donald Trump has done is to make a pact with Christofascists and evangelical Christians whereby in exchange for their support, he would reignite the culture wars against LGBT Americans. Sadly, keeping his promises to these hate merchants has been one of the few campaign promises Trump has kept.  The sudden diktat this week that transgender troops are unwelcome in the U.S. military is but one example of this poisonous alliance. Another is Jeff Sessions' filing of an amicus brief in a civil lawsuit where the government is not a party to argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affords no protections to LGBT citizens. Yet another cloud over LGBT Americans exists in the form of the pending bill in Congress which would grant Christian extremists the right to discriminate at will against LGBT individuals in accommodations, services and even medical treatment if they cited religious belief as the motivation for their bigoted actions.  A column in U.S. News and World Reports looks at this slide back towards hate and bigotry. Here are excerpts:

It was with a familiar sickness of heart that I watched as President Donald Trump launched an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community and active duty service members by tweeting that he is reinstating a transgender military service ban. You see, I've been there. . . . . I was discharged because I am gay. I still mourn the loss of the career I had aimed for, serving the country I love.

Sadly, Trump's heinous and disgusting action – which could lead to the discharge of as many as 15,000 transgender Americans serving our country at this critical time – is "don't ask, don't tell" all over again. Trump's nakedly political aim to isolate, target and discriminate against transgender troops courageously serving our country has, in a few hundred Twitter characters, threatened to return us to a deeply shameful policy that weakens our military. Discharging thousands of highly trained and talented troops just because of their gender identity would be unconscionable.

I was just out of college when I decided to enlist, after the tragic events of Sept. 11. Though I was proud to honorably serve my country in the U.S. Marine Corps, after re-enlisting for another four years, I knew I could no longer go on pretending I wasn't gay.

I wanted to continue to serve, but the law said I was suddenly unfit for duty, simply because of who I am. A huge burden was lifted off of my family's shoulders when "don't ask, don't tell" was finally repealed under President Barack Obama, allowing my Marine husband to keep his distinguished career. He's now serving a year-long deployment in one of the world's most dangerous areas.

All of our brave troops – including my husband, who is currently serving in harm's way – are counting on us to have their backs, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Instead, since the day he set foot in the White House, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have appointed anti-LGBTQ extremists across the government and sought to roll back our rights at every turn. It's bad enough that Trump and Pence oppose marriage equality, that they endorse license to discriminate laws, that they defend anti-LGBTQ measures like North Carolina's HB2, that they appoint anti-equality justices and that they campaign with anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

It is a new low to target thousands upon thousands of actively serving transgender members of the U.S. military, and impugn the honor of tens of thousands more who have served with valor and distinction — including more than 134,000 transgender veterans who are alive today. This attack undermines military readiness and harms the military's ability to recruit and retain the best and the brightest, regardless of their gender identity.

We enlist and commission to protect our most fundamental values: freedom, justice, equality under the law. It is an outrageous tragedy that our commander in chief has decreed transgender troops – who are fighting for those ideals we all share – should be treated so shamefully.

Trump and Pence are hardly the only anti-LGBT Republicans in Washington.  In the northern portions of  Hampton Roads Congressman Rob Wittman - a man who the best I can tell never served in the military himself - is supporting the ban on the pretext that the military needs to save money (this is a portion of a statement I secured from Wittman's extremely nasty press person): 

Rep. Wittman voted in support of an amendment offered by Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri that would have prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for members of the U.S. military. Mr. Wittman's belief is that the job of the U.S military is to fight and win our nation’s wars but that the current, ill-conceived, transgender policy will most likely lead to increased costs, decreased readiness, and decreased lethality.

Naturally, Wittman has no problem with the fact that the military spends ten times as much money on Viagra prescriptions than it does for transgender health service.  And, of course, he has no problem with the millions wasted every weekend when Trump travels to Florida or one of his golf resorts at taxpayer expense.  Hmm . . .  why do I think of the word hypocrite? 

Don't get me started on "friends" who voted for this toxic regime.

HHS Strips LGBT Seniors From Annual Survey

The Trump regime is continuing its assaults on the LGBT community to fulfill the Christofascist agenda of making gays invisible and/or subject to open discrimination and disparagement. The latest piece of this effort involves the elimination of LGBT seniors from the annual survey used by the Department of Health and Human Services to determine services to the elderly.  NBC News looks at this gratuitous mean-spirited development that will adversely impact elderly members of the LGBT community.  Here are highlights:

Advocates are outraged that questions about LGBTQ seniors have suddenly been removed from an annual survey that determines services for elderly Americans.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uses the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAAP) to decide how to allocate federal funding to groups that work with the elderly. For years, LGBTQ groups lobbied to have the survey include questions that would help identify the amount of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elderly people who live in the U.S. and participate in services.

In 2014, questions about sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the survey — helping researchers determine the U.S. is home to about 3 million LGBTQ people over the age of 55.

The Trump administration released a draft of the 2017 survey, with only one noticeable change from previous years: The LGBTQ questions are gone.

"This was a stealth effort to strip LGBT elders out of the survey without anybody noticing," said Michael Adams, CEO of Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders (SAGE), the nation's largest network for LGBTQ older adults.

A number of other national LGBTQ groups — including the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality and GLAAD — joined SAGE in assailing the removal of survey questions regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elders.

"The Trump Administration is literally attempting to erase the LGBTQ community from the fabric of American history," GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement emailed to NBC News. "Our LGBTQ seniors, many of whom survived the HIV and AIDS epidemic, do not deserve to have the government once again brush them off from obtaining transportation services, caregiver support, and even delivered meals that fit their needs."

The federal government uses the results of the NSOAAP survey to allocate around $2 billion for senior services across the nation. Many major elderly service organizations, such as AARP, offer programs for LGBTQ seniors. But it's the groups designed solely with LGBTQ elders in mind that likely have the most impact on the community.

According to a June 2016 report from the legal advocacy firm Justice in Aging, LGBTQ seniors are four times less likely to have children, and tend to live alone with few living family members. They depend heavily on drop-in centers and volunteer home-visit programs, like those offered through SAGE, for social contact and support.

And while the survey helps determine which groups get funding to care for their populations, it also sends a message about who makes up the U.S. elderly population.

"We hear over and over about LGBT elders who feel forced to go back into the closet to avoid mistreatment by caregivers and by other seniors," Adams said. "All of these aging service providers need to hear from this population, that they need to be protected from mistreatment."

Trump sold his soul - if he has one - to the Christofascists in order to win the evangelical vote.  Now, he is fulfilling his promises to attack the LGBT community.

LGBT Business Leaders Endorse Hillary Clinton

In 2007 I was a founder of Hampton Roads Business OutReach ("HRBOR"), the local affiliate chamber of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce ("NGLCC").  Since HRBOR's founding, its membership has grown and much has been done to educate the larger business community and to give the Hampton Roads region a more LGBT-friendly atmosphere.  Working with Hampton Roads Pride, this past HR Pride event saw Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia's largest employer outside of the military, participate as a presenting sponsor.  Democrats have been welcoming to HRBOR and its mission.  Republicans in sharp contrast, with a few exceptions, have not.  Now, at the national level, the  NGLCC has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.  I can think of few things more threatening to the LGBT community than the unholy alliances Donald Trump has made with leading Christofascists to win their backing.  NBC News looks at the endorsement: 

A national chamber of commerce representing LGBT business owners and leaders has put its support behind Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. This endorsement, a first by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), was made at its summer convening in Palm Springs, California.

In a statement shared with NBC OUT, NGLCC co-founder and CEO Chance Mitchell shared that "the stakes have never been so high for the future of the LGBT business community. Hillary Clinton is the progressive champion our businesses and our families need to thrive."

NGLCC "looked at Hillary Clinton's record of both supporting the LGBT community and policy positions on cutting red tape and creating opportunities for small business," shared NGLCC spokesman Jonathan Lovitz "the choice for President was very clear. She has the record and the stated position that will ensure our communities continue to thrive."

"I am honored to have earned the first-ever endorsement of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce" the former Secretary of State said in a statement in response to the endorsement.

She agreed with Mitchell regarding the stakes of the LGBTQ's community future. "The stakes in this election could not be higher for LGBT Americans," said Clinton. "When Donald Trump says 'he'll make America great again,' that's code for 'take American backwards'."

"We don't want to see that foundation eroded by a President Trump who would absolutely ensure that LGBT businesses lose the ground they have made for economic opportunity," Lovitz shared.

NBA Pulls All-Star Game Out Of Charlotte Due to HB2

NBA commissioner

The ongoing self-prostitution of North Carolina Republicans to Christofascist extremists continues to inflict financial harm on the state of North Carolina and its metropolitan areas in particular.  Now, the NBA has followed through on its threat and is moving the 2017 All Star games from Chrarlotte in light of the North Carolina GOP's continued refusal to repeal HB2 which wiped out civil rights protections for LGBT individuals and others.  Hate, bigotry and the embrace of ignorance carry an economic price - something I hope Virginia Republicans are learning from North Carolina's self-inflicted harm.   Here are highlights from the Huffington Post:

The NBA has pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte in protest of North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2), otherwise known as the “bathroom bill,” the league announced on Thursday.

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the league said in a statement. 

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had previously warned in April that the league would pull the All-Star Game out of Charlotte should HB2 not be altered, but had not set a deadline for the state to do so. The NBA and Charlotte Hornets were reportedly working with lawmakers to alter the bill to the league’s satisfaction in the weeks leading up to the decision.

The league has not finalized where it will host the All-Star weekend instead, but said it will make a decision “in the coming weeks.” The Vertical reports that the league is zeroing in on New Orleans as a potential alternative.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R), a staunch defender of the law, rebuked the NBA and “left-wing special interest groups” who have criticized the law.

In a joint statement, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the country, and Equality NC, a North-Carolina-based LGBTQ advocacy organization, praised the NBA for taking a stand against bigotry. 

“Today the NBA and Commissioner Silver sent a clear message that they won’t stand for discrimination against LGBTQ employees, players or fans,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in the statement. “Every day that HB2 remains on the books, people across North Carolina are at risk of real harm. We appreciate the leadership of the NBA in standing up for equality and call once again on lawmakers to repeal this vile HB2 law.”

Perhaps, ironically, canceling the All-Star Game will most adversely punish Charlotte, a city that had tried to protect transgender people before the HB2 was signed into law. The city passed a resolution just one month before to protect the transgender community from discrimination. The anti-LGBT state law made it so the city could not follow through.

In its statement, the league left open the possibility that it award the 2019 All-Star Game to Charlotte, should North Carolina resolve the issue to the league’s satisfaction. The NBA apologized to fans in North Carolina for the decision. 

4th Circuit Rejects Petition of Anti-Transgender Gloucester County School Board

After having been firmly bitch slapped by a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the spineless Gloucester County School Board petitioned the Court for a "hearing en banc" - i.e, a reconsideration by all the judges on the court - in the hope that the board's anti-transgender policies would be upheld.  Today, the 4th Circuit rejected the requested rehearing leaving the political whores on the board who have prostituted themselves to Christian extremists with nowhere to go except for the U. S. Supreme (the denial is here).  Given the current 4-4 split on the Supreme Court thanks to GOP obstructionism, there is a significant chance that an appeal to the Supreme Court would be refused.   The one down side is that to date, the school board members are not personally liable for the litigation costs.  The Augusta Free Press has details.  Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will not rehear the case of a Gloucester County transgender high school student suing his school board over discriminatory bathroom policies. 

The court today denied the Gloucester County School Board’s request for an en banc review of an April decision which held that Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to use school restrooms consistent with their gender identity.

“Now that the Fourth Circuit’s decision is final, I hope my school board will finally do the right thing and let me go back to using the boys’ restroom again,” said Gavin Grimm, the high school junior who is the plaintiff in the case. “Transgender kids should not have to sue their own school boards just for the ability to use the same restrooms as everyone else.”

In an en banc review, cases are reconsidered by every active judge, of which there are 15 in the Fourth Circuit. In April, a three-judge panel ruled two-to-one in favor of Mr. Grimm in his challenge to Gloucester High School’s discriminatory restroom policy that segregates transgender students from their peers by requiring them to use “alternative, private” facilities. In order to hear an en banc review, a majority of the judges must vote to do so; however, none of the judges in this case requested a vote, according to the court order denying the request.

The April ruling marked the first time a federal appeals court has determined Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to use sex-segregated facilities that are consistent with their gender identity. The Fourth Circuit remanded the case for the district court to reevaluate Gavin’s request for a preliminary injunction under the proper legal standard.

Gloucester County School Board Will Squander Money and Seek Rehearing En Banc

Transphobic, cowardly Gloucester County School Board

Rather that put the fiscal interests of Gloucester County taxpayers first and foremost, the Gloucester County School Board has opted to seek to appease a minority of religious extremists and file a petition for a rehearing en banc in the Gavin Grimm case - i.e., by the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Sadly, the move is not surprising given the general backwardness and knuckle dragging aspects of that county.  One can only hope that the petition is refused or that the en banc panel slams the school board's unconstitutional policy.  The Daily Press looks at this wrongheaded decision.  Here are highlights:

The Gloucester County School Board filed a petition Tuesday for a full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals review of the ruling issued last month in the lawsuit filed by a 16-year-old transgender student.

In April, a panel of three judges ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm who is challenging a bathroom use policy imposed by the School Board that requires transgender students to use either a private bathroom or the restrooms assigned to their birth gender. Grimm was born female but identifies as a boy.

In a lawsuit filed last June, Grimm said the high school is violating Title IX and the Constitution by refusing him access to the boys' restroom.

The en banc review the School Board seeks would be a rehearing of the case by all nine judges on the appeals court. The three-judge panel voted 2-1, in Grimm's favor, to send the case back to a federal judge in Norfolk. Federal Judge Robert Doumar refused to issue a preliminary injunction that would have required the schools to let Grimm use the boys' restrooms while his discrimination lawsuit proceeds.

If readers want more information on these transphobic cowards, go here.