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I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle. [Jamie Reed, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
February 9, 2023
242 views
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• Jamie Reed is a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.
• She has spent her professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations, including children in foster care, sexual minorities, and the poor.
• For almost four years, she worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive.
• In 2018, she took a job as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
• There was a dramatic increase in teenage girls suddenly declaring they were transgender and demanding immediate treatment with testosterone.
• To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist and a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription.
• The profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months, including sterility.
• Many of the patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had, and the doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion.
• The center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition.
• Jamie Reed left the clinic in November of last year because she could no longer participate in what was happening there, and is now speaking out about the harm being done to vulnerable patients.
• Jamie Reed worked at the Transgender Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.
• The center was treating teenage girls and young people from the inpatient psychiatric unit and emergency department of St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
• The doctors at the center viewed gender transition as the solution for these patients, regardless of their suffering or pain.
• Jamie raised concerns about parental rights and consent, as well as desisters and detransitioners.
• She witnessed a heartbreaking case of detransition of a teenage girl who had a double mastectomy and later wanted her breasts back.
• Jamie was reprimanded for her concerns and eventually left the center.
• She brought her concerns to the attention of Missouri’s attorney general and is calling for a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit The Free Press to read Jamie Reed’s original post I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.

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Originalism Is Going to Get Women Killed [Madiba Dennie, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 9, 2023
238 views
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• Originalism is a theory of constitutional interpretation that relies on the “original public meaning” of the Constitution when it was enacted.
• Originalism is marketed as fair and free from favor or prejudice, but its effects are not and will not be fair at all.
• The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently relied on originalism in United States v. Rahimi, a case about a law restricting the gun rights of domestic-violence offenders.
• The court concluded that the Second Amendment was violated by the law, because the Founders did not mention women, who are disproportionately victimized by domestic violence.
• The presence of a gun in a domestic-violence situation increases the risk of femicide by more than 1,000 percent.
• The Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen announced a strict new originalist standard for evaluating the constitutionality of laws regulating guns.
• The Fifth Circuit rejected the government’s historical analogues for the statute at issue in Rahimi, because the law disarmed citizens for reasons other than the brazen enforcement of white supremacy.
• Originalism limits who gets to be a part of “our” and who is entitled to the Constitution’s rights and protections, and it makes false claims of objectivity to obscure oppression.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Madiba Dennie’s original post Originalism Is Going to Get Women Killed

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How Florida Beat New York [Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 9, 2023
203 views
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• Hillary Clinton claimed in a 2018 speech that Democratic-leaning states represent the future and Republican ones the last gasps of a dying empire.
• The National Association of Realtors found that Florida and Texas topped the list for domestic migration last year, with New York and California bringing up the rear.
• Florida has gained nine congressional seats while New York has lost eight since 1980.
• The primary driver of the shift in migration preferences is housing costs, not taxes.
• The median New York home was built in 1957; the median Florida home is a full 30 years younger.
• The coronavirus pandemic has weakened office life, thus undermining one of New York City’s greatest historical advantages.
• Cities can enter a sort of doom loop, where declining revenues from taxes and user fees lead governments to cut important government services.
• Blue states aren’t doomed or dying, but even relatively small changes can still lead to acute crises for cities.
• Reversing the dynamic will require blue states to prioritize affordability.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Jerusalem Demsas’s original post How Florida Beat New York

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Republicans Keep Underestimating Joe Biden [Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
269 views
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• Joe Biden is known for his ability to handle tough crowds, which was evident at the State of the Union address.
• Seven years ago, Biden was sent to sell the Iran nuclear deal to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a hostile crowd.
• Biden used his political charm and personal attachment to Israel to win over the room and exited to a standing ovation.
• Last night, Biden exceeded expectations with his folksy, straightforward speech, even winning over some critics.
• Biden also enjoyed the heckling from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, turning her into a prop in his performance.
• Biden’s opponents have consistently underestimated him, setting low expectations that he has easily surpassed.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Yair Rosenberg’s original post Republicans Keep Underestimating Joe Biden

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Turkey’s Trust in Government Has Turned to Dust [Ayşegül Sert, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
252 views
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• In 1999, an earthquake struck near Istanbul, killing 17,000 people and leading to the rise of the AKP, or the Justice and Development Party.
• On Monday, two major earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, leaving more than 11,000 people dead, four times that number injured, and many still missing.
• The AKP has spent the past several years on nationalist campaigns, attacking Kurds in Turkey and Syria, and by threatening its neighbor Greece.
• It has focused on ideology—exhorting women to bear “at least three children” and creating a “pious generation” by opening up many religious schools.
• The government has used infrastructure projects to highlight its break with the past, but has failed to prepare for this catastrophe.
• Turkish citizens have called out on social media to wealthy real-estate and construction-company owners to bring their earthmovers and other heavy machinery to the wreckage sites.
• In the affected region, a shopping mall, a historic mosque, and hospitals were destroyed, forcing patients and caregivers out in the cold.
• The government has shut down many independent media outlets and restricted Twitter, preventing emergency help from reaching desperate areas.
• On election day, people should remember the bare hands of rescue workers and residents digging people out from under our cities.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ayşegül Sert’s original post Turkey’s Trust in Government Has Turned to Dust

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Don’t Read His Lips [James Surowiecki, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
266 views
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• Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke last week after the Fed’s monthly meeting, conveying the message that the fight against inflation was not yet won and that the Fed anticipated continuing to raise interest rates over the next few months.
• Investors ignored Powell’s message and leaped to the conclusion that the Fed was no longer as hawkish as it had been, sending stocks soaring.
• When Powell spoke yesterday at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C., he wanted to make sure that no one missed the point and reiterated that the process of getting inflation down would be “bumpy” and was likely to take “quite a bit of time”.
• Until 1994, the Fed didn’t even announce at its monthly meeting whether it had raised or lowered interest rates.
• Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell have all been open about their thinking and have moved steadily toward more transparency and public communication about their policies.
• The job of central bankers has changed and they now have to be good at communicating without any real rule book.
• Powell did a fine job of explaining that the Fed was sticking with its target of 2 percent inflation, and that, as a result, it planned to keep hiking interest rates.
• However, the market rallied strongly, and by day’s end it was up by more than a percentage point.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read James Surowiecki’s original post Don’t Read His Lips

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Why There Was No Racial Reckoning [Wesley Lowery, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
263 views
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• In the wake of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the nation’s leadership class was presented with a crossroads: to radically rethink American policing, or to retreat to the safety of piecemeal reform.
• Tyre Nichols’ death in Memphis, TN in January 2021 is a reminder of the limitations of reform.
• Five officers were fired and charged with second-degree murder after the release of four video clips depicting the officers’ excessive use of violence.
• The race of the officers (all five were Black) sparked debate about the role of race in police violence.
• The timely release of information and forthright steps to hold the officers accountable likely prevented civil unrest.
• The Memphis Police Department had a Black woman police chief, a majority-Black workforce, body cameras, de-escalation training, and a duty-to-intervene policy, yet Tyre Nichols was still killed.
• The city had responded to a record-high 342 murders in 2021 by deploying the SCORPION unit, a task force of 40 officers instructed to “be tough on tough people.”
• Vice President Kamala Harris attended Tyre Nichols’ funeral, where his mother said she believed her son was sent on an assignment from God.
• The article discusses the legacy of James Baldwin and Derrick Bell, two influential Black American writers and activists.
• Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta child murders in 1979, and Bell wrote the foreword to the 1996 paperback edition of Baldwin’s book, Evidence.
• Bell developed a theory called “interest convergence,” which posits that America’s white majority takes strides toward racial equality only when white people see doing so as in their own best interest.
• The article also discusses the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man killed by police in Atlanta in 2021.
• At the funeral, activist Amber Sherman outlined the family’s demands for accountability and reform.
• Sharpton discussed the need for legislation to end qualified immunity and make it a crime for a cop to stand by and watch another officer brutalize a civilian.
• He concluded that movements take time, but that he and other activists will continue to fight for justice.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Wesley Lowery’s original post Why There Was No Racial Reckoning

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A History of Confusing Stuff in the Sky [Garrett M. Graff, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
282 views
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• Balloons have been used for spying and bombing since World War I, and German zeppelins regularly crossed the English Channel to drop hand grenades or small bombs on London.
• During World War II, Japan lofted about 9,000 balloon bombs toward the West Coast in 1944 and 1945, hoping to spread fear, ignite forest fires, and bring the war to America’s homeland.
• At the end of World War II, the arrival of the nuclear bomb meant that an entire city could be vaporized by a lone attacker arriving out of the blue sky.
• In 1947, reports of a mysterious flight of objects over the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest touched off a summer of excited, panicked UFO sightings.
• In 1952, the Air Force’s UFO-investigation program, Project Blue Book, figured out that Captain Thomas F. Mantell had most likely been chasing a Navy weather balloon when he crashed his plane.
• In the postwar era, balloons represented cutting-edge military technology, and the U.S. had multiple secret balloon projects under way.
• On Saturday, the U.S. military deployed an F-22 to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon, and the pilot who flew the plane is known as FRANK01, honoring Frank Luke, the balloon-busting ace of 1918.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Garrett M. Graff’s original post A History of Confusing Stuff in the Sky

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Feisty Joe Biden Is Back [Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
262 views
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• President Joe Biden gave a raucous and argumentative State of the Union address, previewing what will likely be key themes of his 2024 reelection campaign.
• Biden leaned into his populist “Scranton Joe” persona, sparring with congressional Republicans and calling for national unity around shared goals, particularly delivering economic benefits to working families.
• Biden’s emphasis on economic concerns reflects his belief that the best way to counter the GOP’s cultural notes is to downplay culture-war fights and define himself primarily around a practical agenda to lift average families.
• Biden’s speech showed a contrast to former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s bellicose GOP response, which summoned “normal” Americans to rise up against a “woke mob” allegedly erasing American values and traditions.
• Polling suggests that Biden has not yet convinced most Americans that his economic agenda will benefit them.
• Biden’s speech continued a recalibration of his promise to unify America and work across party lines, differentiating between “mainstream” Republicans and “extreme MAGA” forces.
• Biden forcefully called on Republicans to pass a “clean” increase in the nation’s debt ceiling, and pledged to veto any effort to undo the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that reduce drug prices, any legislation imposing a national ban on abortion, and any efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ronald Brownstein’s original post Feisty Joe Biden Is Back

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Pitchfork and the Death of Things as Themselves [Freddie deBoer, Freddie deBoer’s Substack]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
February 8, 2023
282 views
P

• Pitchfork’s review of Måneskin’s album *Rush!* is at risk of busting at the seams due to its internal contradictions.
• The review suggests that people like the band for reasons other than the sonic quality of the music, to serve an unconscious need to appear neither cool nor popular.
• Pitchfork has gone from being a hipster review site to an enforcer of the consensus “poptimist” worldview in music criticism.
• Poptimism has been the utterly dominant ideology in music criticism for years, yet it is still treated as an oppressed discourse.
• Carly Rae Jepsen is a good example of how poptimism distorts how we discuss artists, with a level of critical defensiveness about her career.
• Poptimism is fundamentally about mandating a particular taste, and failure to properly appreciate massic pop culture commodities makes you guilty of having bad taste.
• The author would like to see celebration of more music that sounds truly different, and for people to stop mistaking their devotion to popular music for some sort of statement on social justice.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Freddie deBoer’s Substack to read Freddie deBoer’s original post Pitchfork and the Death of Things as Themselves

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