The GOP presents the new face of the party.
Headline from Des Moines Register, 3/3/2022
Throughout hearings and debates about a law barring trans girls and women from playing girls and college women's sports, Republicans concocted menacing-sounding scenarios of cisgender girls losing races, games, scholarships, and roster spots to a crush of Iowans with unfair advantages.
A couple used offensive language to refer to trans girls and women and equated trans gender identity with mental illness or delusion. Many ignored or rejected witnesses' repeated reminders that there has never been a problem in our state in girls competitions with people who were assigned male at birth. Similarly unmoving was testimony that trans Iowans are disproportionately subject to bullying and other discrimination.
3/4/2022 update starts here
Excerpt from 3/3/2022 Des Moines Register story:
The passage of House File 2416 has drawn a firestorm of criticism from transgender Iowans, LGBTQ advocacy groups, businesses and Democrats who say it discriminates against transgender girls and violates civil rights laws.
Reynolds, a Republican, said the law is "a fairness issue” because of what she said are athletic advantages for transgender girls. Her signature puts Iowa among 10 other Republican-led states that have passed laws restricting transgender athletes in recent years.
At the law's signing under the Iowa Capitol's rotunda, Reynolds connected the law to what she called Io's "impressive legacy of advancing women's equality.
[snip]
Reynolds' staff said she did not speak with any transgender girls about the legislation before signing it into law."
Original 3/3/2022 post, "...while the Des Moines Register swoon", starts here
Top headline: Washington Post, 3/2/2022
Bottom headline: Des Moines Register, 3/2/2022
Washington Post excerpt:
Trump, who heads his own “America First” movement, is plainly sympathetic to the former cause, and he’s the leader of the Republican Party. He might run again for president in 2024, and if so, Republicans will support him.
Republicans like Reynolds want us to pretend none of this exists. In her speech, she reached for all kinds of absurd ways to blame Russian aggression on Biden’s alleged weakness, while declaring solidarity with Ukraine. But in the real world, while Biden has drawn a line against sending in troops, he has led an international response that has been far more robust than most observers expected.
In contrast, Republicans like Reynolds want to align the GOP with Ukraine while burying the GOP’s record of apologizing for Trump’s embrace of Putin throughout the Ukraine scandal. As MSNBC’s Joyce White Vance puts it, the fact that nearly the entire GOP unreservedly shielded Trump from accountability throughout that sordid saga is “the authoritarian elephant in the room.”
“Until the Republican Party examines the way Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin and expansive nationalism led to this moment,” Rauchway told me, “they can’t effectively stand with Ukraine.”
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