"[State voting] laws — like that recently passed in Georgia — are far from the nightmares that Dems have described, and contain some expansion of access to voting."

"Georgians, and Americans in general, overwhelmingly support voter ID laws, for example. Such laws poll strongly even among allegedly disenfranchised African-Americans — whose turnout in 2012, following a wave of ID laws, actually exceeded whites’ in the re-election of a black president. In fact, the normalization of ID in everyday life has only increased during the past year of vax-card requirements — a policy pushed by Democrats. And Biden did something truly dumb this week: he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election in November now that his proposal for a federal overhaul has failed: 'I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit.' No sitting president should do this, ever. But when one party is still insisting that the entire election system was rigged last time in a massive conspiracy to overturn a landslide victory for Trump, the other party absolutely needs to draw a sharp line. Biden fatefully blurred that distinction, and took the public focus off the real danger: not voter suppression but election subversion, of the kind we are now discovering Trump, Giuliani and many others plotted during the transition period.... And why have they wildly inflated the threat to election security and engaged in the disgusting demagoguery of calling this 'Jim Crow 2.0'? The WSJ this week tracked down various unsavory GOP bills to suppress or subvert voting in three states — three states Obama singled out for criticism — and found that they had already died in committee. To argue as Biden did last week in Georgia that the goal of Republicans is 'to turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion — something states can respect or ignore,' is to add hyperbole to distortion...."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "How Biden Lost The Plot/Listening to interest groups and activists is no way to get re-elected" (Substack).

"An unusual thing happened in the conversation about transgender identity in America this week."

"The New York Times conceded that there is, indeed, a debate among medical professionals, transgender people, gays and lesbians and others about medical intervention for pre-pubescent minors who have gender dysphoria. The story pulled some factual punches, but any mildly-fair airing of this debate in the US MSM is a breakthrough of a kind. Here’s the truth that the NYT was finally forced to acknowledge: 'Clinicians are divided' over the role of mental health counseling before making irreversible changes to a child’s body. Among those who are urging more counseling and caution for kids are ground-breaking transgender surgeons. This very public divide was first aired by Abigail Shrier a few months ago on Bari’s Substack, of course, where a trans pioneer in sex-change surgery opined: 'It is my considered opinion that due to some of the … I’ll call it just 'sloppy,' sloppy healthcare work, that we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process.' Oof."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "The Trans Movement Is Not About Rights Anymore/It's about a cultural revolution and the abolition of biological sex."

Also: "What the trans movement is now doing, after this comprehensive victory, is not about rights at all. It is about cultural revolution. It’s a much broader movement to dismantle the sex binary, to see biology as a function of power and not science, and thereby to deconstruct the family and even a fixed category such as homosexuality. You can support trans rights and oppose all of this. But they want you to believe you can’t. That’s the bait-and-switch. Don’t take it."

ADDED: I just want to print out the top 3 highest-rated comments at the NYT article (linked in Sullivan's piece):

Anon bc the potential for Vitriol

Palo AltoJan. 13

As a parent of a "trans" teen, I ask you: In what other medical area would it be possible for the patient (an adolescent, no less!!) to not only self-diagnose but also prescribe treatment, including drugs and surgery that are potentially irreversible and for which the long-term effects have not been studied? The social media-fueled trans contagion among adolescents, particularly girls - further exacerbated by activists (no matter how well-intentioned their support for trans people) - has gotten out of control. Especially among the white upper-middle class youth and their enabling schools, psychologists and psychiatrists. True gender dysphoria is one thing. This craze is another thing entirely. YES, teens need to be screened thoroughly, if not to say aggressively, NOT just affirmed.

Lauren K commented January 13

L

Lauren K

Havertown, PAJan. 13

If you can't, as a doctor, answer how many children will later want to detransition ("it's thought to be rare" is shoddy data), and there is no formal system for tracking this data, you're running an uncontrolled experiment.

Maria commented January 13

M

Maria

SFJan. 13

Simply stated, it should be against the law to let any person under 18 years of age have gender reassignment treatments of any kind. As a gay boy, most of my friends in school were “sissies” or “tom boys” and were very seriously into hacking the opposite gender, as expressed by all sorts of behavior that in this climate would likely be called “gender fluidity.” Not a single one if asked today would say they wanted a sex change. It’s bizarre and unthinkable to take developing adolescent minds and imaginations so seriously as to prescribe such treatments.