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Sorry about the late posting! The rain is coming down in buckets in Los Angeles, and there was an extended power outage.

No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?

There's an old saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity. There's also a variant that says the only bad publicity is your obituary. Donald Trump may be proving those aphorisms true right now, as his claim that he's going to be arrested today by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has once again made him the belle of the ball, at least for now.

So many people have been longing for the day of Trump's arrest that it's really no surprise that this photo (and several others like it) went viral yesterday:

It's not real, of course, since he hasn't been arrested as of the moment we write this. The photo was created by AI. Clearly, there's still work to be done bringing the AI up to speed because this could never pass for the real thing. His head looks (too) plastic, the lighting is inconsistent, and the hands are wrong (Trump appears to have only four fingers). Perhaps most obvious, however, is that while he may not be as tall as he claims, Trump is over 6', and the (fake) person in the photo most certainly isn't 6' tall. Nearly as obvious: The person in the photo is far too trim to be Trump. Those are something like size 34 pants, and we would guess he hasn't worn size 34 since he was in high school.

Other than propagating memes like this one, Democrats have largely been silent on the supposedly imminent arrest. Not so Republicans. Let's just run down some of the responses:

• Ron DeSantis: Although Trump is the one who ostensibly faces criminal prosecution, it's actually Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) who is somewhat on the hot seat right now. If Trump has to be extradited to New York, then DeSantis would be in a position to either facilitate that or to gum up the works (at least temporarily). If he chooses the former, he will aggravate the MAGA crowd. If he chooses the latter, DeSantis will appear somewhat lawless and will be helping a soon-to-be-rival.
  
  For what it is worth, DeSantis has made his choice, while also taking the opportunity to twist the knife a little. While definitely kowtowing to the MAGA militia a bit by slurring Bragg as a tool of George Soros (a.k.a. "The Jews"), the Governor said he would not get involved in blocking an extradition, also remarking: "Look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair."
  
  
• Donald Trump: Trump was furious at DeSantis' response. So, he hopped onto his boutique social media platform to share these thoughts:

  Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he's unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are "underage" (or possibly a man!). I'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!

  The former president also included the now-famous photo of DeSantis during his teaching years, surrounded by several teenage girls. For those keeping score at home, then, the Governor is apparently both a groomer of underage women and yet also gay. It's hard to keep track!
  
  
• The MAGA Mouthpieces: Trump's wingmen were also furious on his behalf, and yesterday DeSantis was savaged by Steve Bannon, Mike Lindell, and Donald Jr. Bannon called the Governor a "weasel," Lindell said "DeSantis is the Trojan Horse we thought he was. I just wanna put that out there, how disgusting he is," and Don Jr. declared that DeSantis is "owned by Karl Rove, Paul Ryan & his billionaire donors." For those hoping that, after the 2024 primary, the Republican Party can close ranks and come together, this is not a good sign. For those who would like to see the GOP go down in flames in 2024, by constrast, this is an indication that you should stock up on popcorn.
  
  
• House Republicans: House Republicans, at least the ones who tote the Trump water, are doing what they can to try to help their Dear Leader. For example, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who is busy these days chairing multiple show committees, sent a letter to Bragg demanding documents related to his investigation of Trump. Bragg will ignore that letter, unless he sends a reply to Jordan advising the Representative that he is free to review court records in any cases brought against Trump, just as any other citizen is free to do.
  
  
• The Base: In theory, it is time for the base to take to the streets in support of their hero. That is certainly what Trump encouraged them to do over the weekend. However, the pro-Trump protests have been flaccid, at best. Some Trumpers claim this is deliberate, because they want to keep things "low key." Others apparently believe that this is really just a scam being put on by Democrats in order to entrap MAGA faithful, just like the scam Democrats ran on 1/6. Hmmmmmmm. One wonders if what they are really worried about is Donald Trump leading from behind yet again, leaving his faithful followers to be the ones who are bayoneted. In any event, the odds of Violent Uprising v2.0 seem to be low.
  
  
• Alan Dershowitz: Truth be told, we are not sure if Dershowitz is a Republican these days or a Democrat or something else. What we do know is that he's completely wrecked a reputation he spent decades building. These days, he's largely only welcome on right-wing programming, and yesterday he appeared with Charlie Kirk to declare that a Trump indictment is not only illegal, it's a "violation of the Bible." As readers may recall, the U.S. is not a theocracy, and the legal system does not operate according to biblical dictums. Guess that never came up during Dershowitz's years teaching law school.

We will see within the next few hours if Trump's prediction proves correct and, if so, if it results in some photos like the one above. George Conway pointed out yesterday that Trump is the rare accused felon who might actually want a perp walk, as it could help him whip the base into a lather. (Z)

Biden Gets Out His Veto Pen

Until yesterday, Joe Biden was in the no-veto presidents club, along with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore and James A. Garfield. But not anymore, because the President did as promised and vetoed the Congressional resolution that would have overturned a Dept. of Labor rule allowing retirement plan managers to consider environmental and social factors in investment decisions. Since the rule was the work of the Biden administration, it's not so surprising that Biden would like to see it remain in place.

This resolution only got past the Senate because reviews of new executive branch rules cannot be filibustered. There is zero chance the votes are there to override the veto, so the net result of the whole thing was to allow the Republicans, and the handful of Democrats who voted for the bill, to do some posturing about wokeness and socialism and yadda-yadda-yadda. After the veto became official, right on cue, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) spoke to the press and railed against Biden. "This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating," said the Senator. "West Virginians are under increasing stress as we continue to recover from a once in a generation pandemic, pay the bills amid record inflation, and face the largest land war in Europe since World War II." As you might have read, assuming he decides to continue his political career, Manchin will face an electorate next year that went for Donald Trump by more than 40 points. His performative outrage just might have something to do with that.

Biden, for his part, may need his veto pen again sometime in the next couple of years, but he might not. Certainly, he's no threat to the veto kings among presidents, namely Franklin D. Roosevelt (635 vetoes), Grover Cleveland (584), Harry S. Truman (250) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (170). Not only are those the only four presidents to get into triple figures, those four men account for nearly two-thirds of all the presidential vetoes in U.S. history (1,639 of 2,584, or a bit more than 63%).

How could those presidents crank out 20+ vetoes per year, when Joe Biden might not make it to 1 veto per year? Cleveland was a little bit of a special case, as he was an old-school, small-government conservative who doubted most of the powers that other presidents had discovered in the Constitution, and who probably should have been born a century earlier than he was. He waged war so aggressively against the Congress that his opponents wrote a children's song: "A fat man once sat in a President's chair, singing Ve-to, Ve-to, With never a thought of trouble or care, singing Ve-to, Ve-to." People were kind of mean back then.

Beyond that, however, the prevalence of vetoes in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries is largely explained by two things. First of all, in both of those timeframes, each party had a conservative wing and a liberal wing, such that it was possible for bills to get through Congress based on alliances that did not necessarily see eye-to-eye with the president. Today, partisanship and party fealty are much stronger. Second, the filibuster was used fairly rarely in those eras, and even then it could be overcome by forcing the filibusterer to read the phone book until he or she was exhausted. So, it was possible for legislation to get through the Senate with a razor-thin margin. That's not generally the case today.

What it really boils down to, even if Americans don't admit it, and don't take steps to make it more formal, is that the country has developed something of an ad hoc parliamentary system, where the executive and the legislature are usually in lockstep. Indeed, Cleveland once vetoed more bills in a single month (39) than all the presidents combined have vetoed in the 21st century (38). (Z)

Marianne Williamson Is Apparently a Big Meanie

Last week, Politico had a big scoop, namely that (pseudo-) presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is not nice to her staffers. The exact characterization, coming from a dozen people who used to work for her, is that the candidate is verbally and emotionally abusive. This runs rather contrary to her carefully cultivated Earth mother image.

Since Williamson has no chance of becoming president, this story has little relevance to the 2024 race for the White House. So, let us instead ask this question: How come these kinds of stories almost always seem to be about women politicians? It's true, we do occasionally hear about John Bolton throwing staplers or Donald Trump throwing bottles of ketchup. But exposés about how "[Woman Politician X] is abusive with her staff" are practically a cottage industry. We seen stories like this about, among others, Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN), Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Susan Rice and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).

Maybe we are guilty of selection bias, but we don't think so. And assuming that we are correct about the pattern, then what is going on? Do women politicians have to be meaner for some reason, like maybe because that is what it takes to be taken seriously? Or is abusive behavior by male politicians not noticed/commented upon, since it's deemed to be normal behavior? Something else? We don't know. (Z)

Kelly Vetoes Ban on Transgender Athletes... Again

The Kansas legislature is very, very concerned about ensuring the integrity of high school girls' sports. And, to that end, it just passed a bill called the Fairness in Women's Sports Act. That bill, should it become law, would limit participation on girls' high school sports teams to students who were assigned female at birth. Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS) vetoed the bill; Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R) is going to attempt to override the veto, and it looks like he probably has the votes to do it.

The legislature is "solving" a problem here that doesn't exist. First, as we've noted multiple times before, we are very skeptical that the legislators actually care about girls' high school sports. They have not much cared in the past, when it was time to make decisions about funding and such. Second, even if they do care, the number of trans girls who have endeavored to participate in high school sports in Kansas is rather small. It's happened a grand total of... three times. Is something this rare really worth the legislature's valuable time? And third, even if we assume that the legislators really do care, and even if we assume that those three trans girls are significant enough to merit the legislators' attention, the fact is Kansas already has rules on the books that govern the circumstances under which trans girls can participate in high school sports. Those rules essentially mirror the rules used by the International Olympic Committee and other sanctioning bodies.

In truth, the concern here isn't girls' high school sports, it's victimhood. That is to say, the politicians who wish to use trans people as a wedge issue need to create "victims" of trans people, so as to justify their crusade and rally voters behind it. Cis high school girls who have to compete against trans girls are "victims." Cis women who have to share a bathroom with trans women are "victims." Children who are exposed to drag queens (who, again, are incorrectly assumed to be trans) are "victims," either because they are being exposed to "perverse" ideas or because they are allegedly being placed at risk of molestation or other abuse. The anti-same-sex-marriage movement never did a great job of explaining exactly who was being harmed by allowing same-sex marriage. And guess what happened? Same-sex marriage was legalized. The anti-trans movement clearly does not intend to make the same tactical error. (Z)

Why the Trans Hate?, Part IX: The Sporting Life

We have received so very many comments on this subject that we can summon up a set of comments on just about any theme. In view of the machinations in Kansas, then, how about some comments on trans girls and sports? Note that it is true that some of these folks are responding to past commenters, so we're slightly breaking our general rule of putting those comments in the Sunday mailbag. Oh well, go ahead and sue us; you can reach our staff counsel at the offices of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.

• E.S. in Maine, NY: One question about trans woman in sports I would love to ask those people with their knickers in a twist: "If the Olympics were to allow trans athletes to compete, how long do you think it would take for trans women to win lots of medals, and perhaps even dominate the medal-winning?"
  
  Of course, this is a trick question. The Olympics have allowed trans athletes to compete since 2006 and none have won a individual metal.
  
  In July 2021, Canadian non-binary soccer player Quinn became the first transgender Olympian to win a medal and to win a gold medal.
  
  
• B.C. in Soldotna, AK: In response to M.J. in Granger, who writes "I am concerned about the sports aspect of this debate." and "Maybe someone else has a good compromise to balance out each side?"
  
  From a pure biologic and endocrinological perspective, taking hormones for a few years does not remove all the advantages of being born male. Years of hormones wouldn't stop me from being 6'2" with 220-ish lb. body. Nor would it remove all the calcium from my bones or slow my reaction times or make my arms or hands smaller, all of which confer a distinct advantage in almost all sports.
  
  So, let's ditch the men's label all together and label all high level sports as "open." The cis women two standard deviations from the norm can join the "open" competition and beat all the cis boys. The trans women can join and legitimately compete in the open and so can everyone else. Make specific categories for "trans women" maybe or "cis women" but leave the upper echelon of competition genderless knowing that it will mostly be boys beating up boys but would be inclusive to everyone and allow all the truly amazing athletes to enjoy sport.
  
  
• M.M. in Plano, TX: The issue of male-to-female trans athletes in women's sports brings up another issue: Who settles sports controversies? In the United States, government at all levels has stayed clear of all sports controversies. Government and politicians have not decided whether a baseball bat has too much pine tar, whether a basketball player is hanging onto the hoop, whether a derby horse has bumped a competitor, or whether footballs are properly inflated. We have no ministry of sport. We are not East Germany. Questions like these are up to the leagues or the sanctioning bodies. So too with questions of eligibility (including what gender is for the purpose of sport), and who can play in which division or class. Weight classes, as in boxing, may be worth looking at for other sports. But American politicians should stay away from the issue.
  
  
• J.L. in Paterson, NJ: M.J. in Grange asks whether there's a good compromise in athletics. I disagree with the absolutist position that trans athletes should never be allowed in girls' or women's events. On the other hand, M.J. has a valid concern about fairness. The first estrogen injection at the start of the transition process does not immediately deprive an athlete of all the advantages that males have by virtue of sex.
  
  The compromise adopted by the NCAA for collegiate athletics is complex (and is itself in transition!), but can be summarized as conditioning eligibility on a one-year transition period plus a current testosterone level that falls below the maximum allowable level for that sport. Yes, there are presumably some exceptional cis women who naturally have higher testosterone, just as there are some who are 6 feet tall. We can reasonably distinguish advantages like those from the advantages that come from the XY genotype. As M.J. wrote, we have girls' sports for a reason. The NCAA's compromise strikes me as fair.
  
  
• N.D.O. in Portland, OR: I understand M.J.'s position, but as this website is so deeply-vested in numbers (polling, voting, demographics, etc.), I would ask that everyone keep in mind how staggeringly-rare this sort of thing is.
  
  In M.J.'s state (Indiana), there are 85,726 tenth graders, roughly 43,000 of which are girls, and 860 of which are trans girls. While 70% of students participate in sports of some sort, only 12% of trans girls do, leaving us with roughly 103 students in your state who potentially could be trans girls participating in 10th grade sports, out of a girl athlete corps of roughly 30,100.
  
  That's 0.3% of girl athletes, and 0.1% of the student body overall.
  
  I'm not saying your worries are invalid. I am saying that 0.3% is a very small number, and perspective is important.
  
  Now, please keep in mind that medical transition, if done early enough, often involves puberty blockers—eliminating the very advantages people like M. J. express concern about—making 0.3% more like 0%. This is why most of those 103 girls have flown under the radar so far: they are mostly average kids with average abilities.
  
  Really. Sports is famously a statistics-heavy world, so please pick your favorite sport, and look up the rankings of as many trans girl athletes as you can (they tend to make the news, so while extremely-rare, they aren't hard to find). I suspect you will find a few ranked in the upper echelons, a few in the lower echelons, and most... just kinda average.
  
  As bigots leverage the fear of 0.1% of students to influence otherwise-reasonable people to, if not support, then at least not strenuously oppose legislating oppression, the trans girls will have to go through male puberty. They won't, however, stop being trans girls.
  
  
• R.L. in Alameda, CA: I've been watching and commenting on the "why the trans hate" thread with interest. After taking a breather to allow space for actual trans people to comment, I have more thoughts. My context in this discussion is this. I am a straight, white, cis-gendered man. However, I have two queer kids. My daughter is gay. My other child is non-binary. And I have plenty of friends who are some flavor of queer. (As many in the community do, I'm using the word "queer" as a catch-all phrase to describe anyone who identifies with one or more of the letters in LGBTQ, etc.). So while I'll never have the experience of being queer, I am adjacent to and witness to the experience that queer people have in the world. Since two of these people are my (adult) children, I take in much of this witnessing on a very personal level.
  
  Many of the comments speak for me and I won't repeat here what has already been said. (Thank you to those who have pushed back against L.E. in Putnam County. I, too, was offended and the already published comments are way better spoken than anything I could have written). There are two items that I'd like to address. First is a response to R.C. in Madison, because they named me. I had written, "no parent is transitioning their son into a daughter in order to win a state championship" to which they responded, "If that's the case, then the daughter could compete against the boys and you shouldn't have a problem with policies restricting girls' and women's sports based on, for example, the indicator on the athlete's original birth certificate." I guess they missed my point. So I'll try again.
  
  What I'm talking about here is (for example) a self-identified girl who just wants to play soccer with her friends. So you have a kid who looks like a girl, acts like a girl, is mostly friends with girls and wants to play sports with her girlfriends. And you think she should be compelled to play on a boy's team because, as a minor, she still has a penis (because no sexual reassignment surgery can or likely ever will be done on a minor)? This is sheer cruelty to a kid who is trying against all odds to establish her identity as a girl. No one is hurt by letting her play with girls. No one. Remember that we are talking about games played by children. Perhaps, at a professional level, where big money is involved, this is a different conversation. But not here, in youth sports. And when we don't allow the trans girl to play with other girls, harm is done to her. Is it too much to ask to do the least amount of harm?
  
  I'd also like to respond to B.C. in Phoenix, who wrote, "...nobody is gonna dictate to me what pronouns I need to use when the topic requires gender references. If you look female, I'm going to use "she," "her" and "hers." If you look male, I'm going to say "he," "him" and "his." "They," "them" and "theirs" is reserved for groups, not individuals. I've been speaking and writing English following those rules for way too long to change".
  
  Really? You are unable to learn and use words in new ways? Words change all the time. In our lifetimes, Gen-Xers have seen "Negro" become "African American" become "Black." "Liberal" has become "Progressive." "PC" has become "woke." "Cellular" has become "mobile." I could go on. It takes effort to retrain my brain to use they/them for a singular person. I and others in my generation accidentally mis-gender our trans and non-binary friends and family all the time (I've observed that trans and non-binary people develop a great deal of grace, because they get mis-gendered frequently, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes by people like B.C.). It's worth the effort to honor my child's identity. B.C.'s statement that they won't even try is offensive.
  
  Here's an analogy. My first name is Robert. I go by "Robert" or "Rob" in the world. I've never been a "Bob." If someone meets me and presumes to call me "Bob," I will politely correct them and that is the end of it. What if B.C. declared that all "Roberts" should be "Bobs" and nobody is going to dictate to them what version of a name they need to use? This would be offensive to me and I doubt they would do this anyway. How is refusing to use a person's requested pronouns any different? You refuse to even try? Isn't it worth a little bit of effort to honor how a person self-identifies? Is it really that big a deal to try to use they/them in the singular? Does it harm anyone to make a teensy bit of effort?

Thanks, all! We'll bring it on home tomorrow. (Z)

The Word Cup, Round 4: The End Is Nigh

We're going to wrap up the slogans contest this week so we can move on to the blunders bracket. The latter is all ready to go, and will commence on Friday.

Anyhow, in the quarterfinals of the presidential slogans, these were the results:

• Hope (66.6%) defeats Make America Great Again (33.4%)
• A New Deal for America (78%) defeats Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too! (22%)

We thought "Make America Great Again" might just nip "Hope"; we certainly did not anticipate a blowout in the other direction. On the other hand, we did expect "A New Deal for America" to win in a walk.

A few reader comments on these matchups:

• P.W. in Springwater, NY: I also voted for "Tippecanoe" over "New Deal," which was not my original plan. I do think the New Deal, as FDR envisioned it, was impactful at the time and still impactful today. Social Security and other safety net programs are ingrained in our society, no matter how many times others try to reverse or repeal them. But in thinking about the impact on the election, given where the country was in 1932, I think FDR would have won with any slogan—or no slogan at all. But Harrison? It always seemed to me that the slogan really helped put him over the top.
  
  
• M.F. in Burbank, CA: "Make American Great Again" over "Hope." Each slogan helped its respective candidate into the White House, but only one really survived after that person left. Many people are still actively trying to "Make America Great Again," and likely will for a long time, but "Hope" is nowhere to be found. MAGA Republicans are very much a thing. Hope Democrats are not. And since I am trying to choose which slogan has greater impact, and not which slogan I like better (or which candidate I like better), in my mind "MAGA" has defeated what little "Hope" I have left.
  
  
• S.D.R. in Raleigh, NC: "Hope" defeats "MAGA," because of course it does
  
  "A New Deal for America" defeats "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!" The former actually promises something, whereas the latter says nothing.
  
  
• M.N. in Lake Ann, MI: I had a hunch from the start that "Hope" and "Make America Great Again" would end up head-to-head. I had to think long and hard about this because I don't think we can deny that MAGA set off a chain of events that is still ongoing, and that seems like the definition of impactful, even if the impact is negative. That said, "Hope" also set off a long chain of events, and one could even argue that "Hope" led directly to "MAGA." I decided I wanted to be on the side of "Hope."
  
  And... I had to vote to "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!" because I was born a Hoosier and went to university at Purdue, in Tippecanoe county.

And in the quarterfinals of the non-presidential slogans, these were the results:

• We Shall Overcome (78.8%) defeats Black Lives Matter (21.2%)
• Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death! (95.5%) defeats Remember the Alamo! (4.5%)

That first matchup included two titans, but in the end, "We Shall Overcome" overcame. And as to remembering the Alamo, well, the readers largely did not.

The reader comments on these matchups:

• J.N. in Las Vegas, NV: The choice between "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" and "Remember the Alamo" was a tough one, and I suspect I've come down on the losing side. My first reaction was to go with Patrick Henry, reasoning that without the Revolutionary War and our split from Britain, there would never have been a Texas rebellion, so "Give me Liberty" is de facto more impactful.
  
  But the reality is that Henry made his passionate call to arms in Virginia less than a month before British troops marched toward Lexington and Concord and more than a month after the crown declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion. In other words, Patrick Henry's speech is a fantastic bit of writing but likely had a minimal impact.
  
  On the other hand, an independent Texas was not pre-ordained. The refusal of Santa Anna to take prisoners, instead slaughtering the garrison including those who surrendered, galvanized public opinion both within an independent Texas and inside the United States. The army of Texas experienced a large surge in recruitment and went on to win the Battle of San Jacinto and eventually the war. A decade later Texas was part of the U.S. when we went to war with Mexico. Ultimately there is more reason to believe that "Remember the Alamo" had a tangible impact on history than Patrick Henry's fiery speech.
  
  It is, to put it plainly, in vain to extenuate the matter.
  
  
• S.D.R. in Raleigh, NC: "We Shall Overcome" defeats "Black Lives Matter." I sincerely hope that in the long run BLM will be as impactful as WSO has been. But at this moment WSO is the clear winner.
  
  "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" defeats "Remember the Alamo!" The question is which is more impactful on American history, not Texas history. And without the sentiment behind "Give Me Liberty," there wouldn't be an American history to have an impact on.
  
  
• B.C. in Walpole, ME:
  
  
  
  
• O.B. in Los Angeles, CA: There would have been a Civil Rights Movement with or without "We Shall Overcome." I am not sure there would have been a movement without the slogan "Black Lives Matter."
  
  In the other matchup, I voted for "Give Me Liberty," because I make a habit of messing with Texas, whenever possible.

Here is the next ballot; and please do keep sending those comments in. The finalists will be unveiled tomorrow, so you have about 18 hours to cast your vote. (Z)

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