WASHINGTON — The Biden White House put gender politics over children when a bureaucrat intervened in what was supposed to be a scientifically based process to determine standards of care for treating gender-dysphoric minors. I don’t understand why the judgment-impaired Levine even has this job. As the Daily Caller first reported, Admiral Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman and assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, pushed an international panel to remove age-related recommendations for teens who want to undergo hormonal treatments or have their breasts removed, a procedure commonly known as “top surgery.” (READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Not Debatable: Biden Fumbled in Faceoff With Trump) Draft guidelines for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health released in 2021, The New York Times reported, had recommended lowering the minimum age to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. But after Levine chimed in, the age-limit recommendations were dropped. We only know about this because of litigation involving psychologist James Cantor, who warned that WPATH saw “evidence-based” medicine as a threat to its “policy goals,” as the Daily Caller reported. “It’s clear that Levine asked them to drop the age requirements for explicitly political reasons,” Jay Richards, research fellow and director for the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, told me. The good news: The phenomenon is rare. According to Reuters, 282 American teens had top surgery paid for by insurance in 2021 — even as the number of diagnoses for gender dysphoria among children ages 6 to 17 nearly tripled from 2017 to 2021. If the same procedures were happening in Third World countries, Washington policy wonks would refer to the practice as “mutilation.” Here, advocates call it “gender-affirming care” — a classic example of doublespeak. Gender Experiments According to The New York Times, most transgender adolescents who receive medical interventions are prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones, not surgeries. So there’s that. But it’s still an experiment — a medical experiment that is being performed on teenagers. For that reason, the U.K., Sweden, and Norway are among the countries that have backtracked on allowing minors to receive puberty blockers. Where’s the science? While the left prides itself on being pro-science, Team Biden acted without any serious research or reliable data. “The radical activists have been allowed to run the show while Biden’s been sleeping,” Richards observed. It shouldn’t be this way. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician commissioned by the National Health Service of England to review treatments, told the British Medical Journal, “I can’t think of another area of pediatric care where we give young people a potentially irreversible treatment and have no idea what happens to them in adulthood.” “Things feel really urgent in your teens, but actually, when you get older, you realize they weren’t as urgent” as you thought they were, she added. We all know this. We also know, as Richards said, that “they are willing to change their guidelines based on politics.” I don’t understand why the judgment-impaired Levine even has this job. (READ MORE: Two Big Media Mistakes This Week Already) “What I hope happens next is there are congressional hearings and Rachel Levine is asked under oath how the age guidelines disappeared,” Richards added. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Transgender Politics Shouldn’t Trump Science appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Joe Biden is not — how should I put it — up for participating in the next Olympics. Everyone knows that, but now he knows it too, and it seems to be changing his character (if he was ever the lovable grandfather that the Democratic press has been trying to sell us for years). The president crumbled in the debate, and he was left naked as a baboon’s ass before the whole world. And now the rats, aware of the sinking ship, have started jumping overboard. Where are all the cats when we need them? They have started by jumping on Político because the report that the magazine published on Tuesday is a political earthquake of infinite magnitude. What is so serious about the collaborators’ report is not that the president, like any boss in a private enterprise, gets angry when things are not done the way he wants them to be. What is serious is that someone who is not mentally capable of deciding how things should be done gets angry. (READ MORE: The Summer 2024 Presidential Succession Crisis Explodes) Those who criticize from inside the Democratic Party that the president was poorly prepared to debate with Trump, describe a situation that we have seen a thousand times before in the processes of decline in any organization. The core around the leader is getting smaller and smaller; that is, fewer and fewer people are advising him, fewer and fewer advisors have access to the president’s decision-making, and the few who remain around him, well you can guess why they are still there: because they do and say what the boss wants to hear. ‘I Play by Ear and I Don’t Listen to Advice’ An old Spanish comedian once had a funny monologue. He would appear with a violin case announcing that he was about to put on an extraordinary concert for the audience. But in the end, the violin case was empty: he had forgotten the violin at home. So the whole monologue is him talking on the phone to his family and his maid trying to locate the instrument. It doesn’t show up and he says goodbye to the audience with a sentence that could also be signed by Joe Biden: “Well, there will be no concert. Anyway, you haven’t missed anything either, because I play by ear and I don’t listen to advice.” I worked for years as an advisor to the Minister of Culture and Education of the Spanish Government. I have had the opportunity to see how the nucleus of power works, both as a journalist and as a political consultant, and I can assure you that there is only one thing more dangerous than a crazed high official, and that is an advisor who is incapable of saying something that his boss does not want to hear. (READ MORE: Dr. Jill Biden: Perfect Wife Amid the Panic of 2024) On one occasion, I was accompanying my minister to an event at a well-known Spanish institution. There he was to deliver some words that we had previously prepared together the day before. However, when the minister entered the hall with the folder carrying his speech under his arm, I was forced to change his folder for one that I had prepared last minute without being able to say a word. My boss at the time was a prudent man who liked to have every T crossed, and if anything could upset him, it was a change like that, unable even to read the new speech. Yes, I put my job on the line. And I remember his irritated look when he saw me walking away to get lost in the audience with his original speech under my arm. He went up to the speakers’ atrium and delivered the lecture I had given him and we were saved from certain disaster. On the one hand, the original speech contained two serious errors that could have made him look ridiculous. On the other hand, during the day, there had been news that needed to be mentioned. Biden’s Collapse Should Make American History My boss was irritated at first, and he was right, but at the end of the conference he understood what had happened and congratulated me, and he was also right. I think I did the right thing. The job of a political advisor is to do the best you can, even if it angers the person you are advising. No one would trust a doctor who played down the diagnoses of patients who had bad tempers just so that they didn’t get too angry during the surgery. What Biden is promoting is the opposite of what my boss did. Surrounding himself only with sycophants in a very narrow circle commanded by someone who, even in his right mind, was incapable of successfully directing the destiny of the United States. (READ MORE: Biden Slouches Toward November) Biden’s collapse can — and should — mark a before and after in American history. And, frankly, in the history of the world as well. His current weakness is a danger to us all. Although I now experience an almost erotic pleasure watching his sycophants in the leftist press throw themselves overboard from the Biden-boat to the cry of “every man for himself!” The post Joe Biden Plays by Ear, Does Not Take Advice, and Has a Bad Temper appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Donald Trump should choose Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears as his running mate to boost his chances of winning in November and to have a qualified Veep by his side to govern. Sears is a fierce advocate of educational choice and … said education is a “new redline.” Sears has not come up in any reports of Trump’s top contenders for Vice President, but she can be the key to securing victory. She is the first female Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and the first Black woman lieutenant governor and statewide officeholder in the state. Just as President Biden picked Harris to appeal to black and women voters, Trump also has a chance to choose a black female, but not because she is black and female. Sears is widely respected due to her character, experience, and policy chops. (READ MORE: What’s the Matter with Virginia?) Sears is a former Marine, has directed a Salvation Army Homeless Center, served as a state legislator and Vice President of the Virginia State Board of Education, owned a business and is a trained electrician. She also received presidential appointments to the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Census Bureau, where she co-chaired the African American Committee. Polls are showing Trump gaining and even tripling his support from African Americans compared to 2020. While Sears should be chosen primarily for her competence, it is an added benefit that she can solidify and increase black support, as well as help Trump appeal to the key voting bloc of suburban women. The probable reason she has not been among those mentioned as a Veep contender is because of her critical comments about Trump after the 2022 elections. In a Fox Business interview, while applauding Trump’s policies, especially as they related to Black Americans, Sears said she could not support him again because “the voters have spoken, and they’ve said they want a different leader.” This is heresy in Trump world. However, before the 2022 elections, Sears supported Trump and was even the national chair of the Political Action Committee “Black Americans to Re-elect the President.” Like many other Republicans that were not squarely in Trump’s corner after the 2022 midterm election results, Sears has seemed to come back home to the former President as he crushed the GOP primary field this year. Immediately after his guilty verdict in the New York case, Sears questioned, “Where was the case against Hillary Clinton for wiping her servers. Where is the case against President Biden with his involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals with China and Russia.”  She also pointedly noted that after the 2016 election where Trump defeated Clinton, polls showed that “65% of Democrats said they didn’t believe the election was free and fair” to combat the Democrat narrative that Trump is an “election denier.” States Where Sears Can Help Virginia is the obvious place Sears can help put Trump over the top to become only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms. The only Commander-in-Chief to accomplish this was Grover Cleveland, who was our 22nd President from 1885-1889 and the 24th from 1893-1897. In 2020 Biden won Virginia by ten points but current polls have him tied with Trump. A Fox News poll of Virginia voters conducted June 1-4 had Biden and Trump tied at 48 percent each. Sears would have a strong chance of helping put the Old Dominion State’s thirteen Electoral college votes in the GOP column. Also, a New York win would all but guarantee a Trump return to the White House. Astoundingly, polls now show him within single digits of Biden. The Bronx-raised Sears would also be a boost to Trump there. Selecting Sears would also show Trump choosing a critic after her 2022 comments. While not akin to selecting Nikki Haley, it would demonstrate the 45th President is willing to go outside his comfort zone to appeal to a wider base of support. Sears is a fierce advocate of educational choice and in a recent New York radio interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC radio said education is a “new redline — if you live in a neighborhood that’s your school and your school only, only the rich have choice and can live in that same neighborhood but send their child somewhere else.” She also noted the hypocrisy of many Democrats who oppose school choice for all but send their own children to private schools. This is the perfect message and messenger to appeal to a large swath of voters in purple and blue states. (READ MORE: Virginia’s Bishops Speak Out Against Euthanasia) Trump met with the Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, for the first time a couple of weeks ago. In fact, Youngkin has been rumored to be on the list of Vice Presidential contenders. Youngkin said the pair did not discuss his joining the ticket. We should take him at his word, and perhaps the real purpose was to discuss Sears, who is the strongest choice to help Trump make history, just like Grover Cleveland. The post Winsome Sears Should Be Trump’s Veep appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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