WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.
The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.
One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)
In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!
In a 10-page executive order issued on June 15, resident Joe Biden declared war on conversion therapy and pledged to defend the LGBT community from various forms of discrimination.
The order, which was accompanied by a seven-page explanation, is one more salvo in the clash of rights that has arisen in recent years over transgender issues.
The order describes conversion therapy as “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
Keeping a campaign promise he made to the LGBT community, Biden called for an administration-wide push to eliminate the use of conversion therapy by therapists across the nation. He described it as a “harmful” and “discredited practice that research indicates can cause significant harm, including higher suicide rates…”
“My administration must safeguard LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” said Biden.
The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that there were two million Americans identifying themselves as transgender in 2021—about six-tenths of one percent of the nation’s population.
Twenty states and over 100 municipalities have banned conversion therapy for minors.
To further protect the rights of LGBT individuals from encroachment by other states, Biden is marshaling the resources of 10 departments of the federal government, along with numerous supporting agencies. The list includes the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.
Biden said in his order that the Federal Trade Commission “is encouraged to consider whether conversion therapy constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice, and to issue such consumer warnings or notices as may be appropriate.”
Such a designation by the FTC could expose therapists to prosecution.
The aggressive promotion of these and other LGBT policies has provoked a backlash around the country.
In the first quarter of 2022, 238 bills that would “limit the rights” of LGBT individuals were proposed by legislatures across America—half of which involved transgender people, according to NBC News.
The state proposals aim to limit LGBT curriculum in schools, affirm parental rights, defend religious liberties, and restrict Gender Affirming Care (GAC).
The World Health Organization defines GAC as psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender the person was assigned at birth.
Biden’s order has aroused strong opposition from former gays and lesbians, clients and their therapists, and civil liberty legal foundations, who say that individuals have the right to voluntarily seek help to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria (an uncomfortable state of confusion).
President Joe Biden signs a series of executive orders at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office just hours after his inauguration in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Brothers Road is a Virginia peer support fellowship made up primarily of men seeking to align their sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with their personal values, beliefs, faith, commitments, and life goals.
Rick Wyler, the group’s founder, told The Epoch Times, “Many of us have been harmed, sometimes deeply, by therapists who demand that we embrace a gay identity and engage in gay relationships as, supposedly, the only possible path to peace, even if doing so would mean leaving otherwise satisfying marriages or cutting ourselves off from faith communities, beliefs, and traditions that we greatly value.”
Elizabeth Woning of California is a co-founder of the Changed Movement, an international network of people who no longer identify as LGBT.
Woning told The Epoch Times, “So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is a pejorative phrase that is being used to promote state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination. LGBTQ-identifying people deserve the right to follow their conscience, even when it means receiving support to diminish unwanted sexual feelings.
“Such bans dramatically oversimplify the lived experience of anyone who identifies as LGBTQ. They offer only one route for people to follow, no matter their faith or conscience.
“And so, anyone who doesn’t endorse Gay Pride for their own life is disallowed counseling that addresses trauma and emotional distress related to their sexual identity,” she said.
“In the end, counseling bans cause harm and simply limit everyone’s freedom.”
Nevada therapist Robert Vazzo told The Epoch Times, “Don’t ban anything that is poorly defined and can lead to a witch hunt among therapists whose world view regarding homosexuality is different from the mainstream.”
Vazzo questioned the ability to determine at what point during a counseling session the therapist can be said to be actually practicing therapy and attempting to change a client’s sexual orientation.
“The desire to change one’s sexual orientation is often linked to one’s religious views and having thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are congruent with those views,” he said.
“How a person expresses their sexuality and deals with attractions is a very personal thing, and we especially don’t need Joe Biden and the federal government telling us what we should like, dislike, or try to change in ourselves.”
Vazzo said the courts have consistently affirmed a therapist’s right to give his opinion during a session as part of free speech.
He described Biden’s order as “an assault on both personal and religious freedom.”
Tampa, Florida, recently lost a case that challenged the city’s ordinance banning conversion therapy on First Amendment grounds.
New York City recently ended its ban on conversion therapy because of a civil rights lawsuit.
A transgender high school student (C) and classmate (L) visit the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles booth during a college and career convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on December 8, 2010. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
In a July 13, 2022, statement to The Epoch Times, Family Watch International, an organization which promotes and defends marriage and family values, said of Biden’s executive order, “Elite leftists are seeking to prohibit parents and children from obtaining necessary, and demonstrably successful, care [while] the Biden administration is pushing ‘gender-affirming therapy’ as normative treatment. This ‘therapy’ includes such horrifying procedures as blocking normal adolescent development, administering cross-sex hormones, and performing mutilating surgeries that result in permanent sterilization.
“Federal bureaucrats should not be micromanaging matters of health and wellness, especially as it relates to children. It is the role, responsibility, and right of all parents to determine the upbringing of their children, especially as it relates to their healthy development,” the organization said.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver in a Feb. 2022 interview with NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program. (NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Attorney Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty and family issues, told The Epoch Times in an email, “I am confident that litigation will eventually doom these counseling bans … To deny a client the right of self-determination is both unconstitutional and dangerous.”
“The ultimate goal of this movement is to prohibit change-exploring therapies and counsel, and to abolish the Judeo-Christian ethic regarding human sexuality, and even the very understanding of God,” he said.
He pointed out the irony in a system of laws where it is not considered harmful to take puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, or undergo life-changing surgeries, yet it is regarded as harmful to learn about the causes of gender dysphoria and how to become comfortable with one’s birth sex.
Staver said that, under some laws banning conversion therapy, or what he calls “change counsel,” a counselor must either tell the client the type of counseling he may desire is not permitted; or even though the client wants to change, the counselor must, by law, override the client’s decision and counsel the client to accept unwanted attractions, behaviors, and identities.
“These laws unconstitutionally restrict only one viewpoint—change—on the subject matter of same-sex attractions, behavior, or identity. The U.S. Supreme Court has never upheld viewpoint discrimination. … Such viewpoint discrimination violates both First Amendment rights of the client and the counselor … [the] government must not censor the viewpoint of any subject matter the client wishes to receive and what the counselor or therapist may provide.”
California therapist Joseph Nicolosi told The Epoch Times in an email, “In a client-therapist relationship, the client is in the driver’s seat. They set their own goals, which the therapist helps them achieve. Politicians have no business telling people that their therapy goals are illegal.
“Everyone should be free to choose a life consistent with their values … no government should bar access to another person’s choice to live consistent with their faith and their values.”
Medical Experts Divided
The American Psychological Association, in a report released in 2009, said therapies used to try to change sexual orientation can be harmful and that most do not succeed.
In a 2018 position statement on conversion therapy and LGBTQ patients, the American Psychiatric Association recommended that “ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals’ sexual orientation” and “respect the identities of those with diverse gender expressions.”
The psychiatric association said it encourages “psychotherapies which affirm individuals’ sexual orientations and gender identities.”
In a 2018 policy statement, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) stated, “Conversion therapies’ (or ‘reparative therapies’) are interventions purported to alter same-sex attractions or an individual’s gender expression with the specific aim to promote heterosexuality as a preferable outcome…
“These interventions are provided under the false premise that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are pathological. They are not; the absence of pathology means there is no need for conversion or any other like interventions.”
The American Psychiatric Association ceased classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.
The AACAP statement warned that “there is evidence that ‘conversion therapies’ increase risk of causing or exacerbating mental health conditions in the very youth they purport to treat.”
A transgender pride flag is held aloft in New York on June 28, 2019. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)
Biden’s executive order and the current narrative of the professional psychiatric and psychological guilds upon which it is based; have received strong criticism from other medical quarters.
“The habitually misquoted American Psychological Association’s Task Force’s 2009 report (on page 43) stated specifically that modern change-allowing therapy ‘since 1978’ was ‘nonaversive,’ meaning free of infliction of pain or shame,” wrote Dr. Andre Van Mol, MD. in an email to The Epoch Times.
Van Mol, a Board-certified family physician and co-chair of the Committee on Adolescent Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians, said the Task Force’s report explicitly states on pages 43 and 82, that research meeting scientific standards did not allow attributing harm or help, inefficacy or efficacy, to change-allowing therapy.
“Banning counseling choice for gender dysphoria condemns already at-risk sexual minority youth to experimental and unproven hormonal and surgical gender-affirming therapy (GAT), which permanently and prematurely medicalizes children for a condition that overwhelmingly resolves by adulthood,” he said.
Van Mol stated that GAT has not been proven safe and effective. It does not reduce suicides and is not the international standard of care for gender dysphoric minors.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) have introduced legislation that would allow adults who undergo body-altering gender-transition surgeries as minors to sue surgeons for damages for up to 30 years after the procedure.
Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said her organization has had to introduce a Women’s Bill of Rights, which defines what a woman is, in response to transgender ideology and a larger Marxist agenda that aims to destroy Western culture.
“Gender ideology is just one strand of a much bigger, radical, Marxist agenda, and that is critical theory,” she said. “So you’ve got critical race theory, critical gender theory, [and] critical class theory. That’s a bigger assault on freedom,” Sheffield told NTD on July 15 during Freedom Fest 2022.
“[Critical theory] originated in Germany at the Frankfurt School and it was to indoctrinate and to basically destroy Western civilization,” said Sheffield.
The Women’s Bill of Rights was necessary because basic scientific truths are under attack, said Sheffield, pointing to when the recently appointed Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not define the word “woman.”
“I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said during her confirmation hearing.
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during confirmation hearings in Washington on March 22, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“[Jackson] knew it was a hornet’s nest, no matter what she said, that it would be just torn to shreds. So she played it very cautiously. And I think that that’s unfortunate because it just showed how the left has cowed anyone from being able to just speak the most basic commonsense,” said Sheffield.
“The polling is overwhelmingly in our favor, that people say, ‘we reject allowing biological men to compete in biological female sports,’” added Sheffield.
Sheffield said she is not against anyone identifying as they wish in their personal life, but there are biological differences that should be respected, especially in law.
“There are biological realities for women, and they put us at a physical disadvantage to biological men. And the fact that we have to spell this out, I think, is unfortunate,” said Sheffield.
“The definition of what it means to be a woman is under attack, the definition of what it means to be a mother is under attack, in terms of the protections for women and girls that we have been fighting for,” said Sheffield.
Proposed Laws Could Have Opposite Results
Laws under Title IX were created to protect women but are now in jeopardy, she said.
“And now they’re under assault because some people want to allow biological men to come in and take away scholarships and championships and opportunities, and we believe that it’s counter to science and it’s counter to the law,” said Sheffield.
The transgender issue is bringing conservatives and some on the left together, said Sheffield, with the progressive Women’s Liberation Front working with Sheffield’s conservative Independent Women’s Forum.
Because transgender male prison inmates are allowed to self-identify as women and have carried out assaults, Sheffield said, “We see this as an assault on the basic safety and the civil rights of biological women to have places where we are protected, where we have equal protection under the law where civil rights were not violated.”
Democrats in Congress led by Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are once again pushing to change the Constitution and add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that they say would ensure women’s rights. But conservatives like Sheffield say the move will harm biological women and create unfairness in areas including sports and reproduction, giving transgender males an advantage.
“As women leaders in Congress, we are here today—all these decades later—still fighting this same battle. We won’t stop until we win, when the ERA is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” said Maloney during a speech on the anniversary of the ERA on March 22.
However, Sheffield said attorney and Eagle Forum founder, Phyllis Schlafly, fought against the ERA when it was first introduced because it would achieve the opposite of what it proposes.
“What Phyllis and conservatives said at that time was that if you put this into place, you’re actually going to erase women, you’re going to force biological women into the draft, you’re going to allow men into women’s bathrooms, because it’s not going to recognize that there are actual biological distinctions,” said Sheffield.
Ruling against EPA sets precedent for a series of lawsuits against agency overreach
As the Biden administration reels from a string of recent legal defeats, political analysts hail the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling, West Virginia v. EPA, as but one component of a new, broad-based approach that the courts are taking to halt a century-long effort by progressives to empower the administrative state and rule Americans by bureaucratic decree.
Dating back to President Woodrow Wilson 100 years ago, progressive presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, have worked to transfer law-making authority from Congress to their executive agencies. Wilson, the father of modern-day progressives, believed the Constitution, with its separation of powers, was an outdated document and that professional bureaucrats were superior at decision-making, compared to the time-consuming and compromise-ridden process of passing laws through elected representatives.
Wilson wrote in the 1887 article “The Study of Administration” that “the many, the people, who are sovereign [under the Constitution] have no single ear which one can approach, and are selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn or foolish.”
“The greatest revolution since the Constitution in many ways has been this movement away from legislatures into agencies,” Matthew Spalding, Dean of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Government, told The Epoch Times. “The crisis here is the movement away from consent,” as Americans increasingly lose their right to have a voice in setting the laws and regulations that control their lives.
In 1984, for example, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that came to be known as the Chevron Doctrine, ruling that federal agencies had the authority to decide the scope of their power in situations where congressional authorization was ambiguous. Since this ruling, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, the courts have sided with federal agencies in cases where the authority of agencies was challenged.
Now, for the first time in a century, a series of rulings from federal courts have put up a roadblock to halt administrative encroachment. Two factors have brought about this change. First, the appointment by the Trump administration of 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices. And second, the Biden administration’s unusually brazen attempts to push federal agencies well beyond their legal authority in order to impose a left-wing agenda on the United States without popular consent.
West Virginia Ruling
In the case of West Virginia v. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to force America’s electric utilities to switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had no authority to do so.
“For years, unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state have been trying to destroy our fossil fuel industries by transforming the EPA into a communist-style central planning authority because they know they can’t get their radical environmental policies passed through Congress,” said West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore in an official statement, lauding the decision as “a victory for the rule of law.”
“Part of the problem is Congress writing these broad laws that leave a lot of room for interpretation by the agencies that are supposed to execute the laws,” William Shughart, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, told the Epoch Times. “That has led to this explosive growth in the administrative state. The West Virginia ruling applies the brakes to that growth.”
‘Major Questions Doctrine’
One of the key components of this Supreme Court ruling is the “major questions doctrine.” This is the concept that agencies, which are unelected by and unaccountable to the public, cannot make up rules on issues of major importance to Americans without clear authorization from elected representatives.
“The Supreme Court decision speaks to the legal flaws with trying to mark an entire industry for termination,” Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, told The Epoch Times. “What the Supreme Court is saying is that when you take on initiatives of major economic or political significance, those measures have to be authorized by a clear statement from Congress.”
“One of the most profound aspects of this ruling is its portability across regulatory regimes,” Berry said. In rendering its West Virginia decision, the Supreme Court looked at prior rulings, including those against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “The common thread across those cases is the executive branch using an administrative agency to wade into policy areas beyond what Congress authorized,” Berry added.
In August 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the CDC did not have legal authority to ban landlords from evicting non-paying tenants. In January of this year, the Court ruled that OSHA did not have authority to force employees of large companies to take the Covid-19 vaccine.
“What we’re seeing here is extremely significant,” Spalding said. “The way the Court works is they do these things in different cases here and there, but they’re putting a doctrine together that ultimately builds up to a larger case. The heart of the matter is the unconstitutionality of essentially shifting legislative authority outside of the legislative branch into these agencies.”
“There are already tons of lawsuits out there that have been winding their way through the legal system for years,” Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times. “Some of those lawsuits will eventually make it to the Supreme Court, but a lot of them may be dealt with at lower court level simply because people can now point to the precedent that was set in West Virginia v. EPA.”
Administrative Overreach
Last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked orders by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) that attempted to force states to, among other things, allow transgender children to compete in sports in schools according to their gender identity rather than their gender at birth. Twenty state attorneys general brought a suit against the DOE directive, arguing that the authority to decide such policies “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.”
Two other areas where administrative overreach by the Biden administration will likely be challenged next are a directive from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding “green accounting” (that is, accounting that factors environmental costs in the financial results of operations) and gun control initiatives from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
In a case that closely parallels West Virginia v. EPA, the SEC issued a directive that all listed companies must provide audited reports on the greenhouse gas emissions of their operations, as well as those of their suppliers and customers. In addition, companies must detail their strategies to reduce such emissions. Critics believe this will open companies up to a rash of environmental lawsuits and actions by activist asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey was among the first state officials to threaten legal action in response.
The ATF has been attempting to expand the legal definition of which gun parts constitute a firearm in an effort to implement a Biden administration initiative, which failed to pass Congress, against unregistered homemade guns, thus turning a formerly legal practice into a felony. A lawsuit against this has already been filed by the Gun Owners of America. In addition, the ATF was found to be keeping records of “several hundred million” gun purchases, despite the fact that Congress explicitly outlawed a federal gun registry.
Loss of Public Trust
Such attempts to circumvent public consent by legislating through unelected federal agencies inevitably lead to a loss of public trust in government.
“If there’s no consent, no responsibility, no check-back system, then you really are undermining public confidence in that process,” Spalding said. Regarding the ATF and gun control measures, a June poll by NPR/Ipsos found that, while most gun owners said they would accept universal background checks, they “harbored a deep distrust of government.”
“The more that this administration steps over the line and claims for itself powers that the peoples’ representatives in Congress have not given it, the more we should expect a decline in trust and in legitimacy,” Berry said.
As the courts begin to push back against administrative overreach, however, the backlash from the political left has been escalating, including demands for “packing” the Supreme Court with more left-leaning judges, or even abolishing the Court altogether.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, President Biden stated, “We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away our freedoms and our personal autonomy.” A recent survey by Rasmussen and the Heartland Institute found that, in the wake of the EPA decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the pro-Second Amendment Bruen decision (regarding concealed weapons), most Democrats and younger voters see the Court as a racist and sexist institution and want to pack it with progressive judges, remove it, or replace it.
“These findings clearly show that most Democrats and young Americans do not respect the sanctity of the Supreme Court when it issues decisions that run counter to their agenda,” Heartland Institute Research Fellow Chris Talgo told The Epoch Times. “As a former U.S. history and American government teacher, I can say without a doubt that our education system is not teaching the basics when it comes to civics. Most American students cannot name the three branches of government, let alone understand the role of separation of powers. This does not bode well for the future of freedom, seeing as how young voters are hostile to the very institutions that preserve our freedom.”
The Justice Department, for example, permitted weeks of intimidating protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices after the opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade was prematurely leaked prior to the formal ruling. Following the arrest in June of an armed man who was charged with attempted murder at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demanded that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “detail the steps the Department of Justice is taking to protect our Supreme Court Justices in the wake of an unprecedented harassment and intimidation campaign.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was criticized for taking weeks to bring a bill protecting Supreme Court justices and their families to a vote, even after the alleged assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh. When the bill was put to a vote, 27 Democrats voted against it.
Granting Power to Experts
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who disagreed with the majority in the West Virginia case, argued that the courts must defer to the EPA, which she deemed the “expert agency,” and allow the agency to interpret the scope of its own power. Critics of this approach, however, remain skeptical of granting too much power to experts and question whether administrators are in fact experts when it comes to issues like national energy policy or making personal medical decisions.
“These are career government employees,” Cohen said. “They are not experts.”
“Look at the experience the country had during the pandemic, where we had such experts as Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others throughout the federal government who completely mishandled the public health response to COVID-19,” Cohen said. “If these are the experts, we need to free ourselves from experts, because they got it spectacularly wrong.”
“Anytime you encounter the word ‘emergency,’ anytime you encounter the word ‘crisis,’ be careful,” Cohen said. “It may in fact be a crisis because those things happen, but it may be nothing more than a pretext for a power grab.”
“The invocation of an emergency is not a justification for combining the powers of government into a single person,” Berry said. “That’s the definition of tyranny.”
The controversial male-to-female transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been nominated for NCAA’s Woman of the Year.
The award “honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athletes,” according to the NCAA’s website. Since it was established in 1991, there has never been a biological male nominee. Thomas beat out around 219,000 biological female competitors for the nomination.
Lia, formerly William, began transitioning in 2019 before the swimmer’s junior year at the University of Pennsylvania after years of competing as a man. Thomas gained national spotlight after winning the Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships 500-yard freestyle event in March, leaping from a 65th ranking as a man to the first place spot as a woman and breaking Ivy League records.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe biological males should not be allowed to compete in collegiate or professional women’s sports, according to a June Washington Postpoll.
In January, the NCAA Board of Governors mirrored the International Olympic Committee’s guidance on trans athletes, allowing the governing bodies of sports to make their own gender-qualifying rules. FINA, the international water sports federation, had not yet announced their new transgender policies by the time Thomas was permitted to compete and erase records set by outstanding biological women.
The Woman of the Year nominee pool will eventually be narrowed to 30 finalists, with the winner selected in January. Each NCAA member school has the opportunity to nominate up to two athletes for the honor, though a second has to be an “international student-athlete or student-athlete of color.”
The NCAA selects the Woman of the Year based on athletic and academic performance as well as a personal statement and service and leadership work. Thomas holds a national title, so his athletics score is the highest possible on the selection scale.
The service and leadership section asks nominees to list special recognitions received. Thomas has been mentioned in hundreds of news articles since 2019 and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated earlier this year.
Thomas’s Olympic dreams were dashed last month when FINA banned post-puberty male-to-female transitioners from competing as women. Thomas now plans to attend law school and become a civil rights attorney, citing experiences with gender discrimination.
Television, movies, news media, universities, sports, nonprofits and even major corporations are increasingly controlled by leftists.
One island of conservative sanity is talk radio, a medium in which leftists have been unable to succeed despite their best efforts and the government funding of NPR, which even some liberals are finding to be too much.
The Hispanic community in South Florida, with its large Cuban-American population, has been right-leaning and pointedly anti-communist. That has made a success of Radio Mambi — WAQI-AM — in Miami, with its conservative Spanish-language programming.
But not for long, if a George Soros-backed sale of the station and others is completed.
The leftist billionaire is a “lender,” as opposed to an investor, in the development of the Latino Radio Network, which will be made up of WAQI and 17 other Hispanic radio stations, Fox News reported.
The purchase of the stations from Univision would include some financing by Lakestar Finance, which is affiliated with a Soros fund management firm.
The Latino Radio Network’s founders both worked for former President Barack Obama.
Stephanie Valencia was deputy director of the Latino Vote Program for Obama’s 2008 campaign and went on to have several positions in the Obama White House’s Office of Public Engagement, according to her LinkedIn page.
Meanwhile, Jess Morales Rocketto, a former senior new media strategist for the AFL-CIO who also worked on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, was the engagement program manager for Obama’s 2012 re-election bid.
Valencia is the executive chairwoman of the board for the Latino Radio Network, while Rocketto is a board member.
Neither woman sounds like a good match for Radio Marti. Neither does the inflow of Soros money.
Some on-air personalities have broadcast they will not accept retention bonuses to stay with Radio Mambi.
Lourdes Ubieta announced earlier this month that she’s moving to Americano Media, a SiriusXM radio network that features a conservative Spanish-language perspective.
This week, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio said they too were leaving WAQI for that venture, Fox News reported.
En vivo a las 11:00 am hora del este, con los tres que presentadores que hacían parte de @radiomambi710 y rechazaron la oferta para continuar, después de la oferta de compra por parte de Latin Network, financiado por el extremista de izquierda George Soros. pic.twitter.com/QB6f4ujKdG
“They don’t want a dime of Soros money,” said Jorge Bonilla of the Media Research Center.
Some advertisers are planning to leave, too, he said.
Bonilla said the planned purchase “is about controlling the flow of information to a specific community for political purposes.”
“You’re looking at the shutdown or the radical restructuring or the reformatting … of an iconic radio station, a station that for decades has been a beacon to Miami’s Cuban-American community,” he said.
Radio Mambi, according to Bonilla, “has been really the community’s voice politically and culturally. It’s a beacon of anti-communism, and so these are the concerns that emerged as a result of this transaction.”
He said a parallel would have been for Rush Limbaugh to be removed from WABC-AM, his flagship station in New York, in the 1990s and replaced with Air America, the left’s unsuccessful talk radio effort.
Bonilla called the Radio Mambi situation “unprecedented.”
A long-forgotten mandate of the Federal Communications Commission — which must approve the sale of the stations to the Latino Radio Network — is that, according to the Communications Act of 1934 — stations should operate “in the public interest, convenience and necessity.”
Were the FCC operating along those lines, a serious case could be made that Radio Mambi was fulfilling its public mission by its focused service to a specific ethnic community.
But if its past behavior is any indication, it’s unlikely the FCC — its board made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, with one vacancy — will oppose the sale.
There have been some demonstrations against the proposed sale, and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has been critical of it.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, tweeted, “The Soros-funded radical Left is running a scheme to manipulate local media in Florida to push their Marxist agenda on voters.”
The Soros-funded radical Left is running a scheme to manipulate local media in Florida to push their Marxist agenda on voters.
In Florida, we reject the professional Left & their attempt to infiltrate our state & will always stand for truth and freedom.https://t.co/OeLbSDpJVh
His campaign has run ads in Spanish that said, “Warning, voters! The left is taking control of our local media. Billionaire George Soros, known for financing extreme leftist causes, is now financing the purchase of Hispanic radio stations right here in Miami,” Fox News reported last month.
And there was an event at Radio Mambi that has a kind of precedent.
Veteran broadcasters know the first two things new owners do when they take over a radio station: First, they say there will be no changes in personnel. Second, they fire everybody.
The loss of current staffers might reduce the value of the station. That may be one reason Valencia went to Miami on July 7 to attempt to calm angry Radio Mambi staffers, according to Fox News.
Under new ownership, she told them, “Nothing will change.”
“Nobody believes her,” an individual at the station told Fox News. “Honestly, they really believe we are that stupid.”
Now more personalities have left WAQI, and Americano Media is poised to carry on the tradition of conservative Hispanic talk radio.
Founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, told NBC News the venture, which launched in March, was coming at just the right time.
“Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media,” Garcia-Hidalgo said.
“There is an appetite for this,” he said. “You see it on social media. You see it in elections.”
And that, Comrades Soros, Rocketto and Valencia, is one way we do capitalism.
Following a former high school football coach’s Supreme Court victory, a radical atheist is attempting to use the court’s decision to justify his own deranged ideas.
On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of former high school coach Joseph Kennedy in the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. Kennedy had lost his job for praying on the football field after games, but he sued them for violating his First Amendment rights.
“The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.
Clearly perturbed by that decision, Florida activist Chaz Stevens asked a Broward County, Florida, high school to lead a Satanic prayer at one of its games, Patch reported.
“I want to give a prayer at the 50-yard line at my alma mater,” Stevens told Patch. “I assume they’re going to tell me to kiss off. This all started when the U.S. Supreme Court, aka the ‘American Taliban,’ sided in favor of a high school coach in Bremerton, Washington, and now he is allowed to give his prayer after the game.”
Stevens also asked to lead a prayer at Bremerton School District, but he told Patch he had not received a response.
While Stevens was trying to make an argument for the separation of church and state, his dishonest antics do nothing but damage his case.
Stevens calls himself the “Archbishop” of Mount Jab Church of Mars, a satirical activist group he founded in an attempt to mock religious conservatives. The organization’s website is littered with bright yellow “donate” buttons, and Stevens often shares where the money goes on his Twitter account.
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“Need a laugh?” Stevens wrote in a tweet on Wednesday. “Wonder what your $20 goes towards?”
The tweet included photos of an upside down cross with the words “In Chaz We Trust,” along with a sign explaining the display was “an expression of religious freedom” that did not “represent the city’s administration.” It is unclear what city the display was in.
If Stevens was actually arguing in favor of a real religion, such as Buddhism or Islam, many conservatives would likely support his right to express it. Yet with these weak attempts at comedic attacks against Christians, he is simply exposing the sick and deranged ideas in his own mind.
Perhaps the most telling statement was one Stevens gave to Patch about his so-called “message.”
“My message is always wrapped in humor,” he said. “It makes me laugh and I do some beautiful art. It’s all wrapped in my art,” he said. “My art is wrapped in activism, and it makes me happy.”
When Christians read this, we ought to feel sorry for Stevens. If these sick acts actually make him happy, it is clear his life is devoid of true joy, which only Jesus can provide.
These antics are nothing more than cries for help from a man who is unwell, and he is trying to conjure up happiness in himself by mocking others.
Only Jesus is able to fill the gaping void so clearly present in Stevens’ life, and Christians ought to pray the Lord reveals Himself to Stevens and shows him what true joy looks like.
As for his attempted rebuke of the Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Stevens falls completely flat. Anyone who is paying attention can see through Stevens’ depressing attempts to rile up evangelicals.
Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.
Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.
In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.
Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.
On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.
He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.
Straightforward from here:
1. Biden announces not running again.
2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.
3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.
4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.
As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.
Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.
“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.
“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”
At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.
Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.
WNBA star Brittney Griner remains imprisoned in Russia, and many people have argued resident Joe Biden and his administration are not doing enough to bring her home. NBA star LeBron James said she should be questioning her desire to return at all.
In a trailer for a new episode of his talk show “The Shop,” James suggested Griner may feel like she has been abandoned by the United States.
“Over 110 days,” James said. “Now, how can she feel like America has her back? I would be feeling like, ‘Do I even want to go back to America?’”
According to NPR, Griner was initially arrested on Feb. 17, at an airport near Moscow after staff allegedly found vape cartridges containing marijuana in her luggage.
On Thursday, Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Moscow-area court, CNN reported. The charges could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
“She decided to take full responsibility for her actions as she knows that she is a role model for many people,” Griner’s legal team said in a statement.
“Considering the nature of her case, the insignificant amount of the substance and BG’s personality and history of positive contributions to global and Russian sport, the defense hopes that the plea will be considered by the court as a mitigating factor and there will be no severe sentence.”
While James was not the first to suggest the U.S. government should do more to help Griner avoid having to stay in a Russian prison, he took his comments further than most by saying he would question a return to the country if he were Griner.
Multiple conservative commentators torched James on Twitter following his comments.
“LeBron James thinks America is so bad Brittney Griner might prefer to just stay in a Russian prison for a decade,” The Daily Caller editor David Hookstead wrote on Twitter. “People on ESPN act like this clown is a genius. In reality, LeBron is incredibly stupid.”
LeBron James thinks America is so bad Brittney Griner might prefer to just stay in a Russian prison for a decade.
People on ESPN act like this clown is a genius. In reality, LeBron is incredibly stupid. https://t.co/ShPS4Pym86
LeBron James, professional idiot, says he would question ever returning to the United States if he’d been arrested in Russia like Brittany Griner. https://t.co/L2CAJivkpj
USA Today interviewed David Whelan, whose brother is being held in a Russian prison for a spying charge he denies. Whelan said the condition of Russian prisons is abysmal.
“When they talk about buildings being Stalin-era, they’re not kidding,” Whelan said. “Prisoners have to maintain the cleanliness of their cell, and so it was at first quite filthy, since the previous occupant had not seemed concerned about cleanliness. You are allowed a weekly shower and a daily walk.”
He said guards show “no interest in nutrition” for prisoners, and friends or family members often have to bring in food for many of them.
Meanwhile, James is enjoying the NBA off-season in America. According to contract information from Sportrac, he is set to be paid a base salary of more than $44 million dollars for the season starting later this year.
Some players’ agents have been contacted by the DOJ in recent months.
The issues stem from the PGA Tour suspending players who participate in LIV Golf, a Saudi-funded rival circuit.
“This was not unexpected. We went through this in 1994 and we are confident in a similar outcome,” a PGA Tour spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
The Federal Trade Commission in the 1990s investigated the tour over rules that restricted golfers’ ability to participate in outside events and appear on television. But no disciplinary action was ultimately taken.
LIV, founded in 2021 and funded by wealthy Saudi Arabians, began hosting U.S. events this year. Its competitions have drawn a number of PGA golfers, including Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau. LIV officials have bragged about its “growing roster” and how it is “providing new opportunities for the best players in the world to compete.”
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan told The Associated Press in February that players who participated in LIV events would be removed from the PGA Tour. He said that “anyone on the fence needs to make a decision.”
The tour added in May that members “have not been authorized” to take part in an LIV event in London and warned any members who still did “are subject to disciplinary action.”
That led to Dustin Johnson, a longtime PGA member, and Kevin Na resigning from the tour.
“I’m very thankful for the PGA Tour and everything it’s done for me. I’ve done pretty well out there for the last 15 years. But this is something that was best for me and my family. It’s something exciting and something new,” Johnson told reporters during a briefing.
Other leagues have also become involved.
Ian Poulter, Adrian Otaegui, and Justin Harding were suspended by the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) for taking part in LIV events but won a stay from a British court, enabling them to compete in the Scottish Open, which DP and PGA run, Golf Digest reported.
The trio had been fined $121,230 each.
“I will simply say we are disappointed by the outcome of today’s hearing, but will abide by the decision,” Keith Pelley, DP’s CEO, said in a statement at the time. “It is important to remember, however, this is only a stay of the sanctions imposed, pending the hearing of the players’ appeal as to whether those sanctions were appropriate.”
Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions—including government and the media—is in a state of collapse, falling to an average of just 27 percent across all categories, according to the latest national poll released by the Gallup Organization.
Only the military and small businesses still enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans.
Although public belief in institutions has been weak for most of the past 15 years, the 27 percent average for all categories is the lowest recorded by Gallup.
The company began measuring confidence in institutions in 1973 and has done so each year since 1993.
The survey figures came after Gallup delivered sobering news on June 22. At that time the company said confidence in the overall direction of the country fell to 13 percent that month, down 3 percentage points from May and 11 points since March when the figure was 24 percent.
It also reported at that time that despite ongoing economic malaise, resident Joe Biden’s job approval rating held steady at 41 percent between May and June.
Gallup’s finding on the issue was called into question by the Civiqs Poll’s daily tracking survey of registered voters which found Biden’s approval rating has sunk to a new record low of just 30 percent, the New York Post reported July 9.
Only in two states, the Democratic strongholds of Vermont and Hawaii, are the president’s supporters more numerous than his detractors.
Gallup also reported on June 29 that although 96 percent of U.S. adults expressed pride in varying degrees about being American, that figure includes a record low of 38 percent who consider themselves “extremely proud” to be Americans, the lowest figure for that description since the company began tracking the issue in 2001.
Another 27 percent of Americans said they were “very proud,” while 22 percent said they were “moderately proud,” and 9 percent described themselves as “only a little proud.”
Four percent said they were “not at all” proud to be Americans.
In the new Gallup survey, Americans expressed less confidence in institutions than they did a year ago, with significant declines in 11 of the 16 examined—and no improvements for any of the institutions.
The biggest drops were regarding the presidency as an institution—as opposed to the job performance of the current president—and the Supreme Court.
Confidence in the presidency is now at 23 percent, which is 15 percentage points lower than 2021.
The Supreme Court came in at 25 percent, down 11 points since 2021. The survey was completed before the court rendered landmark rulings on gun rights and abortion, decisions that have proven controversial.
Confidence in Congress came in at just 7 percent, down from 12 percent a year ago.
The figures for the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court were record Gallup lows.
Five other institutions’ ratings plunged to record lows.
The church and organized religion weighed in at 31 percent, down from 37 percent. Newspapers scored 16 percent, falling from 21 percent. The criminal justice system got 14 percent, after rating 20 percent. Big business came in at 14 percent, falling from 18 percent. The police garnered 45 percent after the 51 percent figure a year ago.
Large technology companies weighed in at 26 percent, down from 29 percent. Gallup has only been measuring confidence in the category for three years.
Small business and the military still enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans, despite slipping support. Small business came in at 68 percent, down from 70 percent in 2021. The military had a confidence level of 64 percent, which is lower than the previous 69 percent figure.
Confidence in the medical system is at 38 percent, down from 44 percent. The figure for public schools is 28 percent, down from 32 percent. Banks scored 27 percent, a drop from 33 percent. Confidence in organized labor remained steady at 28 percent.
Confidence in television news is down to 11 percent from 16 percent in the 2021 survey.
The new annual survey was carried out by telephone in the first three weeks of June. The respondents were 1,015 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
WNBA star Brittney Griner is still imprisoned in Russia, and political leaders in America have begun speaking out about efforts to bring her back.
At the same time, Hollywood star Nick Searcy said there are more important priorities.
“Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit,” Searcy wrote on Twitter.
Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit.
— Nick Searcy, INSURRECTIONAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) July 10, 2022
Harsh as his statement was, Searcy was correct that Americans should not have their constitutional rights stripped in this country.
Last year, Searcy teamed up with filmmaker Chris Burgard for a documentary called “Capitol Punishment.”
In the documentary, Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin detailed the treatment he received following the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021.
“They put me in a cell by myself, total solitary confinement, in a cell not much bigger than a walk-in closet,” Griffin said in the film. He remembered being called an “effing white cracker” on multiple occasions.
In December, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar further detailed the alleged rights violations the prisoners had to endure.
“They have been beaten by the guards. They are called white supremacist,” Greene said, according to the Post Millennial. “They are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, the ability to trim their fingernails.
“There’s more outrageous things happening there. They’re denied time with their attorneys. They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there. They are denied bail and being held there without bail.”
While Biden has yet to address these allegations, he said on Friday that he replied to a letter from Griner, The Guardian reported. Griner wrote to Biden about her fear of being stuck in Russia long term, but he reportedly assured her of his efforts to bring her home.
“I was able to read [Biden’s] letter, and it brought [me] so much joy, as well as BG,” said Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner.
“I believe every word that she said to [Biden] he understood, and he sees her as a person, and he has not forgotten her, which was her biggest cry in her letter.”
She said Biden promised he is “exhausting all efforts” to get Griner home.
While there is nothing wrong with Biden trying to get Griner home, he should be making the same or more effort to ensure prisoners in the United States are not being mistreated.
By focusing efforts on Griner instead of major issues occurring in America, Biden is showing just how powerful his political bias truly is.
WNBA player Brittney Griner on Thursday pleaded guilty in a Russian courtroom to possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage when she landed at a Moscow airport in February.
It’s a sad story, but Griner is hardly the political prisoner that resident Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made her out to be. And under no circumstances should the Democratic Party’s identity politics allow a black lesbian millionaire athlete who broke the law in a foreign country to receive preferential treatment—as she already is receiving—over genuinely innocent hostages long left to rot in foreign prisons. Even if one were to leave aside the fact, which we simply cannot, that Griner clamored for the removal of the national anthem from WNBA games.
So far, the administration is sending all the wrong signals, elevating Griner’s case above that of actual political prisoners like Paul Whelan: A senior U.S. diplomat on Thursday hand-delivered a personal note from Biden to Griner, a move that followed a phone call from Biden and Harris to Griner’s partner, Cherelle, in which Biden assured her that he is “working to secure Brittney’s release as soon as possible, as well as the release of Paul Whelan and other U.S. nationals who are wrongfully detained or held hostage in Russia and around the world.”
That may sound like inoffensive boilerplate, but equating Griner and Whelan is indecent. Whelan has been locked up since 2019 on trumped-up espionage charges. He insists he’s innocent, and he was almost certainly framed by Russia’s spy service.
Whatever one thinks of Russia’s draconian drug laws, Griner has quite plausibly admitted her guilt, so it’s unclear why Biden and Harris have made Griner’s ordeal a higher priority than Whelan’s. Now, his family wants to know why. His sister, Elizabeth Whelan, said this week she was “crushed” and that if the president wants to talk about securing Whelan’s release, “he needs to be talking to the Whelans!”
Beyond that, Griner is not exactly an American patriot. She launched a campaign in the summer of 2020—in the wake of George Floyd’s murder—to press the WNBA to stop playing the national anthem before games. “Yeah, we’re here to play basketball. But basketball doesn’t mean anything in a world where we can’t just live,” she told the Washington Post at the time. “We can’t wake up and do whatever we want to do. Go for a run, go to the store to buy some candy, drive your car without the fear of being wrongfully pulled over.” Maybe after her brush with Russian law enforcement, she’ll realize conditions back stateside aren’t as oppressive as she made them out to be.
In the meantime, Griner should not jump the line in any prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration. Russian media have reported that Moscow wants the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout cut loose in exchange for Griner. His arms trafficking fueled some of the worst wars of the 21st century, from Africa to South America to southwest Asia. He was finally convicted in 2011, after federal agents posing as Colombian Marxist guerrillas caught him in a sting. Should Bout go free because a WNBA star wanted to get high when she was playing basketball in an authoritarian police state? Clearly not.
Biden should reject that rotten deal, but if he’s tempted to make a trade, he should demand the Russians first release Paul Whelan.
Taylor Silverman is grateful for all the anti-Semitic Instagram comments.
The 27-year-old amateur skateboarder made waves earlier this year when she spoke out against biological men participating in women’s sports. A self-described Zionist who is rarely photographed without a Star of David necklace, Silverman wasn’t surprised that online backlash quickly turned anti-Semitic. But she’s a little surprised by how much of it came from her friends.
“If I hadn’t spoken up, I would still be friends with people who are blatantly, and proudly, anti-Semitic,” Silverman tells the Washington Free Beacon. “I’m grateful I did, because it showed which of my old friends are anti-Semitic pieces of trash.”
The friendly fire was only part of the backlash Silverman faced for speaking publicly about her experience competing against transgender athletes. It wasn’t a political protest. Silverman had been skating for a decade, and only just began to feel that the skateboarding community was making space for women. But as soon as the community began to take shape, she felt it come under attack.
“The first time I lost to a trans man, I thought people would recognize it was unfair and speak out. The second time, I thought, ‘Someone has got to do something about this!’ The third time, I realized: I am somebody. And so, I spoke up.”
In a May 11 Instagram post, Silverman recounted losing first place in the 2021 Red Bull Cornerstone Contest to Lillian Gallagher, only the latest instance where she had gone up against transgender competitors.
“I am sick of being bullied into silence,” Silverman wrote in the post, which also included a screenshot of a concerned email she sent to Red Bull. “A biological man with a clear advantage won the women’s division,” Silverman wrote to Red Bull sports marketing manager Erich Drummer. “This took away the opportunity that was meant for women to place and earn money.”
Red Bull never responded to her email. But the trolls did.
“This argument is transphobic as fuck and shows what type of person you are,” one commenter wrote. “Hopefully you give up on life soon since you’re bad at everything,” added another.
Soon, the hateful comments began popping up on Silverman’s other posts.
“Taylor the type of girl to rat someone out at the camps just to get some extra bread,” reads one comment on a photo of Silverman at the Dead Sea, an apparent reference to the Holocaust. “It’s chill I can say this too I’m an actual Jew not some token ass white girl,” the commenter added.
Silverman’s Instagram feed is an object lesson in what happens to those who take the unpopular position on hot-button issues. The comments beneath her photos are a minefield of the left’s choice insults: “transphobe” and “TERF,” “colonist” and “Free Palestine!” As Silverman sees it, most of the vitriol comes from the same place.
“It’s anti-Semitism and misogyny disguised as some kind of social justice,” she says. “They’re just going with the latest trendy word to get away with hateful shit.”
Silverman is no stranger to being attacked for her faith. The anti-Semitism she faced in the classroom was one of the things that motivated her to complete high school at home. During the pandemic, she left her skating team after teammates sent her videos of Hitler and told her Jews “deserved” anti-Semitism. Going solo meant losing out on free gear and help with travel and competition expenses. But that hasn’t slowed her down one bit.
In fact, Silverman travels so much these days that she never knows what to say when people ask her where she lives. But whenever she can, she gets back to her hometown of Kalamazoo, Mich. It was there, as a newly minted, 16-year-old homeschool kid who missed playing sports, that Silverman first picked up a skateboard. It’s where she learned to ollie, and where she entered her first skating competition.
It’s also where she learned firsthand that the skating community isn’t always the safest place for young women. As a novice, Silverman says she “was treated horrifically” by male skaters and “faced everything from bullying to sexual assault at the skatepark.” When she first started entering local competitions, they often didn’t have separate contests for women. It was only after she started winning, and traveling to bigger events around the country, that she began to meet and befriend other female skaters.
“It was exciting to me when there were women’s divisions, and girls were showing up,” Silverman says, recalling the excitement she felt at the chance to “meet and hang out with women who were passionate about the same things as me.”
It was a desire to protect this community that led Silverman to speak out—and landed her in the middle of one the most controversial issues of the day. The NCAA came under fire for its decision to let male-to-female transgender athletes participate in women’s sports after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas—who swam in the men’s division until 2019—began competing as a woman. In recent months, the International Rugby League and the International Swimming Federation have barred transgender athletes from participating in women’s events.
In many ways, skateboarding is more gender-blind than other sports where transgender athletes have become a flashpoint. It’s one of Silverman’s favorite things about the sport. Anyone from anywhere can pick up a board and go, no matter their race, age, or gender. But, as Silverman is quick to point out, that doesn’t change the fact that transgender athletes have a competitive advantage.
She points to studies that show male-to-female transgender athletes remain faster and stronger than their peers even after undergoing hormone therapy. And she can rattle off the physical differences that give male skaters a competitive advantage: They have higher centers of gravity, denser bones, and carry less body fat than women.
But while Silverman is certainly concerned with how gender affects competitive fairness, her fight isn’t about titles or prize money. It’s about empowering young girls.
“Skateboarding has been male dominated for so long, it’s intimidating for girls,” Silverman says. Women’s divisions offer aspiring female skaters a chance to practice their skills away from the “pretty misogynistic” skateboarding culture. If girls feel like there’s no place for them in the skating community, Silverman says, they simply won’t show up.
Her fight could soon take on greater urgency. In June, the Biden administration proposed changes to Title IX that would allow students to participate in school events based on their assumed gender identity, rather than biological sex. Critics of the proposal say that the changes cut against the core of Title IX, which was meant to boost women’s equality.
Like many critics of these rule changes, Silverman is particularly frustrated with female athletes who are pushing to upend women’s sports in the name of progress.
“The people who are advocating for this, I don’t think women’s feelings or safety is on their radar at all. I don’t think they care about us at all,” she told the Free Beacon. “The women who advocate for this, I think they’ve lost touch with any kind of feminism, and it’ll come back to bite them in the ass one day. Hopefully they realize they’re giving up their own rights, and their daughters’ rights.”
Even though this issue is making waves in Washington, Silverman doesn’t see herself as a partisan warrior. “This isn’t a political issue,” she says. “It’s a commonsense issue.”
Silverman makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t see her position as “anti-trans” but as “pro-woman.” She doesn’t care if skate competitions have open divisions where people of all genders can compete against each other, nor would she mind if there were dedicated divisions for transgender skaters. She doesn’t relish the fight—she just wants a solution.
Though she admits it’s been an “overwhelming” month of media exposure and online harassment, Silverman has no trouble seeing the good in her experience. Marveling that she’s spent the past month “touring around the country fighting for women,” she sounds like she just won the lottery. Whether she’s talking about the inspiring people she’s met or recounting tales of online harassment, her optimism never seems to waver.
It’s not the demeanor you’d expect from someone who’s been tossed into the fray. But to Silverman, it’s the only way to stay sane.
“A really good way to cope with the craziness we’re going through,” she says, reflecting on our present moment, “is to laugh.”
