It’s about grappling with something that hurts

Cesar Chavez is considered a civil rights icon. He is a hero to the labor movement, particularly farm worker’s rights. There are a large number of streets, schools, and other things named for him and in 2024 Obama designated March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day in honor of his birthday. But about three weeks ago the New York Times published a yearslong investigation that revealed Chavez abused women and underage girls. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos discussed the report and the fallout. The allegations by the NYT is more than rumors and unsourced accusations, so can’t simply be dismissed. Since the publication Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers, revealed she had two pregnancies because Chavez raped her. The children were adopted. The left then had to grapple with what to do. Many issued statements condemning Chavez while expressing grief at the downfall of an important man. Efforts began to rename streets and schools, pull down statues, and cover over murals. March 31 was renamed as Farm Workers Day.

Overall, Democrats accepted the revelations and moved to cancel all gestures honoring Chavez while wrestling with heartbreak. Contrast that with how Republicans deal with sexual abuse allegations on their side of the aisle.

When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, women came forward with allegations of abuse. Republicans worked to discredit the victims and gave Kavanaugh a lifetime seat on the Court. The nasty guy was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and there was no Republican condemnation.

But Democrats aren’t distancing themselves. They are taking accountability—a thing that the GOP simply doesn’t believe in. It’s about grappling with something that hurts, but realizing that Chavez hurt people far more. ... Denouncing a man who was a hero to many is hard, and it’s sad, and it’s what has to be done.

Last week an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported:

Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women's events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. ... In the U.S., President Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in February last year, and pledged to deny visas to some athletes attempting to compete at the L.A Olympics. The order also threatened to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allowed transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports. Within months the U.S. Olympic body updated its guidance to national sports bodies citing an obligation to comply with the White House.

Transgender World tweeted the reaction of Sophie Labelle to the IOC’s announcement. That was in the form of a bit of history. Gender policing of Olympic women began in the 1936 Nazi Olympics.

Naked parades in front of a jury, gynecological inspections, chromosomal testing, certifications that only richer countries could issue... These were all attempts at gender policing by the Olympic Committee between 1936 and 1996. One after another, these practices were outlawed. They were all found to be flawed, misleading, humiliating, discriminatory, racist, misogynistic. Since 2003, strict guidelines have allowed intersex and trans women to participate. Despite 20 years of inclusion, there has only been one trans women who competed. She did not win any medal. However the I.O.C. has decided to go ahead and bring back gender policing to ban intersex and trans athletes in time for the Nazi Germany Olympics of 2028. Oops, I mean the United States.

Earlier this week Needham reported on a Supreme Court ruling that went against us. It is especially annoying because the decision was 8-1. In 2019 Colorado adopted a law banning conversion therapy for minors. Kaley Chiles, an evangelical Christian therapist, sued in 2022, saying her free speech rights were being violated.

Here’s the logic behind the decision, such as it is: Talk therapy is simply speech, and telling evangelical Christian therapists that they can’t traumatize children into denying their sexual orientation or gender identity therefore restricts those therapists’ speech.

The idea that a law restricting what she can say in therapy restricts her viewpoint brought Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on board.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter, called out why that’s bulls---, writing, “Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional.” Exactly. Colorado isn’t stopping Chiles from speaking out in non-therapy settings about how groovy it is to force kids to be straight. Colorado isn’t stopping Chiles from doing conversion talk therapy with adults who can consent to such a thing. Colorado isn’t even fully banning conversion therapy for minors, because the law applies only to licensed therapists and carves out an exemption for those “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.” All Colorado sought to do was stop licensed therapists from using an inherent position of power to force an objectively harmful treatment on a minor child.

Part of why the majority opinion is so bad is it frames the issue as helping the minor person with their own desires to not be queer or trans. And they have those desires because their religious community beats into them that being queer or trans will send them to hell. Robert Ito, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the increasing difficulties in teaching LGBTQ history. In California some high school history teachers do quite well in integrating our history into their national history courses and other classrooms. It’s a topic important and relevant, especially since more people died of AIDS than died in Vietnam. The effort has been helped by California’s FAIR Education Act, passed 15 years ago. But the law has no penalties for non-compliance and a lot of districts never heard of it so only 37% of self-reporting districts are using FAIR-approved materials across all grade levels. Add to that the nasty guy’s forceful attacks against DEI coupled with people (who may not be parents) who complain to school boards. Then there is the Supreme Court ruling of last June that says parents can opt their children out of LGBTQ instruction. Many teachers become wary of the topic or afraid of the pushback they might get if they start teaching it. So they don’t. Of course, the people hurt most are the LGBTQ students who feel more isolated. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Shanaka Anslem Perera:

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given.

Randa Slim responded, quoting @fordrs58:

“The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no.”

Pam Bondi has been fired as Attorney General. Glad to see her go, though I doubt her replacement will be any better. That prompted Aaron Blake of CNN to comment:

Attorney general may be the most impossible job in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Trump demands things that are not only ethically problematic, but also that reside somewhere in the space between highly difficult and impossible. Nobody has gotten the balance right.

Bondi served “the shortest tenure for a confirmed attorney general in 60 years.” Dan Pfeiffer, tweeting a discussion of the nasty guy’s recent TV speech to the nation.

The most damning revelation is that the public and the markets have tuned out Trump. Oil prices spiked, and stock markets sank as Trump was speaking. When the public tunes out a 2nd term president, they rarely tune back in.

Another Dan Pfeiffer tweet:

The thing to understand about Pam Bondi’s firing is that she was ousted for incompetently executing on Trump’s corrupt wishes, not resisting them.

In the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing Musk telling the world’s poorest “No more free lunch!” while behind him is a huge mound of bags of money marked as “Fed. funds Musk gets.” Dr. Art Garfunky added commentary:

Elon Musk had DOGE defund USAID, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, causing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of deaths from starvation and disease - and Trump GLEEFULLY approved it. It’s the single most evil act in US history.

A tweet by Mehdi Hasan shows a video of Bondi at a Congressional hearing. Hasan added:

Watch shameless sycophant Pam Bondi, who Trump just fired as AG, heap endless and ridiculous praise on Trump. And he still fired her. Amazing. So, so humiliating

. Lady Haha posted a cartoon by Jeff Danzinger. It shows what appears to be a blind man labeled The Draft tapping forward while carrying manacles. Young men, throwing away their red hats, are trying to step out of his way. The caption says, “Young Trumpers Realize They May Face the Draft for Trump’s War.” Just below the cartoons is a comment by learn:

Bondi was fired for not being vindictive enough. From the Republican’s approval they knew she was a bad manager, unqualified for such a large operation and was chosen for putting Trump way before justice. The criticisms about “mishandling” Epstein files meant she wasn’t able to redact and hide fast enough. And her main “failure” was in not effectively persecuting [sic] Trump’s enemies much less forcing indictments. She was fired for not being good at bad.