The reporting has been mixed on the language around sterilization, but the more detailed coverage describes the restrictions that way. Other coverage just says things like “coverage restrictions on some gender affirming care”. In any case, I expect Republicans to make the deal worse over time if they can.

MAYBE FIGHT TO REMOVE IT FROM THE BILL THEN

We know they didn’t remove it from the bill. We don’t know that they didn’t fight to remove it from the bill. We do know that they objected and negotiated it down for what it originally was. We also know that passing no bill would be worse, even for any children impacted by the coverage restrictions.

Out magazine isn’t blowing things out of proportion to harm the Democrats.

My comments were directed at the summary more than the article. The article does have some of the same flaws though.

The HRC, GLAAD, and ACLU aren’t just making up things in their head.

I hope they are clear eyed about who is responsible. I don’t think it likely that they would blame Democrats and ignore the Republicans who pushed it.

Your capitulating ass doesn’t get to decide when LGBTQ people are allowed to get upset

I made no objection to anyone being upset. It absolutely sucks that this was included and I’ll fight right along side you to get it changed. We should all be upset. But, we are in a split power situation with the Democrats seriously weakened after the election. That’s going to have consequences, and I’m afraid this was the tip of the iceberg. No President with a split Congress has ever been able to control everything in every piece of legislation they sign. That’s just not reality.

YOU, who is postulating on complex negotiations behind closed doors.

Postulating that negotiations happened, or what happened in those negotiations? We know the negotiations happened, and we know that early drafts were worse on this and other Republican culture war issues. Beyond that, I don’t claim to know anything, but you seem to. It was you who postulated that they didn’t try to remove it.

Maybe in the near future we’ll learn something about the negotiations that will change my opinion. Maybe the Democrats traded this to the Republicans in exchange for more pork for blue states or more bombs for Israel. Are you aware of any such dealings?

My comments were mostly directed at the summary, although a couple criticisms apply to the article as well. As I said, it’s legitimate to discuss how complicit Biden is, and you can add the Senate to that as well. The problem is doing it in the context of incomplete and misleading information about what was actually in the bill, who put it there, and why. Such a discussion does more harm than good in the ways that I explained.

The bit at the end was perhaps over the top, but it’s not wrong that this kind of reaction against the Democrats is exactly why the Republicans put it in the bill.

You weren’t privy to the negotiations, so your commentary that Democrats just passed it because it was “easier” is entirely speculation. Stating that as fact is something I consider offensive. It also didn’t just “sail right through”. The negotiations took months, and the negotiations on such a bill don’t end until the votes are known. The actual process of calling the vote is irrelevant. I criticize Democrats myself, but not for things I just make up in my head.

The bill just “includes” the provision? Nobody put it there, it’s just that new language often spontaneously erupts in a piece of legislation?

And why the vague language of “limits access to gender-affirming care services”. What’s actually in the bill is no more complex and a lot more clear. Are psychological gender-affirming services still available? Yep. Are puberty blocking drugs still covered? Yep. All that’s blocked is coverage for procedures that might result in sterilization - procedures that are already not generally done on minors who arguably aren’t yet capable of giving proper consent.

Tell the whole story or GTFO. Debating Biden’s complicity is fine, but don’t skip the Republican’s role with the passive voice like you’re CNN describing how more violence just “erupted” in Gaza. Don’t hide what’s actually in the bill and potentially cause trans kids to not bother seeking medical services because they were misled by your hack politics.

This is not legitimate outrage at the legislation. If it were, you wouldn’t have left out the main protagonists, what’s actually in the legislation, and the entire story. It’s just mastebetory outrage bait meant to divide the left which is (surprise) the entire reason Republicans forced the issue to begin with.

If you’re not already a right wing troll, you should go find the people who pay money for posting this kind of garbage.

What facts? I pointed you to the facts and you just made shit up anyways.

You’re lecturing me on logic yet you haven’t even mastered basic reading comprehension. “Republicans” is not the same as “all Republicans” or “every Republican”. Had I used either of those you might have had a point but I didn’t because I’m not an idiot.

Seems to me that Biden took away the strikers power to give them scraps

Seems to me that your talking out of your ass.

and the centrists want to be thanked and praised for that dogs dinner.

I didn’t link you to the centrists asking for credit, I linked to the union giving them credit.

On Khan, yes Biden deserves some praise for that anti trust work.

And consumer protections. Khan did good work on both.

Whenever Biden does something progressive (and not centrist), we all seem to agree that its praiseworthy. Weird eh?

Uh, no? Not weird at all. Credit where credit is due, and condemnation where that’s appropriate as well. I’ve got all kinds of problems with the Biden presidency. Gaza is probably the biggest one I have, but there are plenty of valid criticisms domestically as well.

It’s not about making fascists “happy”, and no, I have no delusions on that account, and I don’t consider anyone expendable. But, if we went into the next administration without a defense funding bill, Republicans would still get what they did, and have the chance to attach anything else they wanted as well. The choice the Democrats had was this, or worse than this, so Biden signed.

Going into the next administration, Democrats will have zero power to be complicit in anything. The people “shoveling vulnerable populations into the maw” will be Republicans - the same people that do it today.

You just want no accountability as your party turns quisling.

Wow, you have no fucking clue how I feel about holding Democrats accountable. I just hold them accountable for the things they actually have power over. I’ve ripped Harris to shreds over her cowardly hiding from trans issues in the campaign, and Biden before that. I’ve been advocating for overthrowing the Democratic establishment for 30 years.

Your understanding of the railroad strike is deeply incomplete. The following is from an IBEW statement.

"We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.

Here are 8 Ways the Biden Administration Has Fought for Working People by Strengthening Unions.

Here is an article covering Biden’s consumer protection and anti-trust initiatives. Lina Khan was Biden’s appointee to the FTC, and she did amazing work in her short time in office - even pissing off a lot of Democratic donors.

The percentage of people who attempt suicide and eventually succeed is actually more like 10-15%. Receiving medical treatment is a factor in whether a trans child attempts suicide, but it is only one of many, and not the most important. In 2022 Tricare had a total of 2,500 kids receiving some form of gender affirming care, a far cry from your estimate of 20,000. I really don’t want to quibble too much on the numbers because 1 kid is too many, but it’s not going to be thousands in any case.

I was also not talking specifically about puberty blockers, not mental healthcare in general. Where I was mistaken, is that puberty blockers are actually not impacted by this bill at all, and will still be made available. Since you are an apparent activist on this issue, I would have thought that was something you would have caught. The treatments being disallowed are specifically those that might “result in sterilization” - treatments that are rarely ever performed on trans minors. I want to be clear here in saying that this does not mean I think the change is OK.

Now your despicable suggestion that people rely on GoFundMe for their life-saving healthcare?

Lets be clear about the nature of my suggestion. It’s analogous to explaining how two people can share a gas mask in a chemical attack. It’s not how I think it should work, but it’s an option that’s better than nothing. My perspective is that the only people who should be involved in these decisions are doctors, patients, and if applicable patients. Medical care should be a right, but I know that’s not where things are today - for anyone.

And, again, we don’t know what was on the table that might have been even worse. What we do know is that if the bill didn’t get passed that all healthcare benefits would be impacted for every military family, not to mention delays in pay. If the Democrats held a hard line and refused to compromise, the Republicans could just hold off a month and bypass the Democrats altogether. Then we might actually have seen all gender affirming care pulled, instead of just care for minors that might result in sterilization.

I’ll say this again too. I don’t give the Democrats a complete pass on this. In this particular situation I don’t think they had a choice, but in the past several years they have avoided this topic almost completely and allowed Republicans to frame the entire issue. I have deep problems with what Democrats did leading up to this situation that helped put them in this spot.

1 or 2 Republicans? That’s such a creative way to do logic that I’m impressed!

Yeah, I totally concede. Straight up. In fact, I’ll bet that the average Democrat is worse than 1 or 2 Republicans on every issue! You fucking got me, LOL.

What group did Republicans object to throwing under the bus?

What? Who said they did? Republicans need to throw someone under the bus. That’s fascist strategy 101. They just don’t care who it is.

people that Democrats consider expendable.

Let’s put you in charge of the party then. Who do you choose to sacrifice instead? The Republicans are going to insist on some red meat. If the bill gets pushed off until January 20, it’s just going to result in far worse for more people. One small charity could completely mitigate this issue for everyone, so why aren’t you working on that?

This is just the beginning of the shit this country will be dealing with for at least the next couple of years. If the Democrats don’t absolutely crush it in 2026, it will be a lot longer than that. You want to play these fucking games and pretend that Democrats are the enemy, then the blood can be on your hands.

I say this fully aware that the Democrats are on the wrong side of lots of issues that I care about, but there is no issue where they are worse than the Republicans. We can help by fixing the culture. Politicians are not good at doing the work of activists. (And activists generally make lousy politicians.)

“You’re dumb.”

You don’t even know what that means because it has no context globally. You are clearly from the US and have an agenda.

From the Wikipedia page on Neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that originated among European liberal scholars during the 1930s. It emerged as a response to the perceived decline in popularity of classical liberalism, which was seen as giving way to a social liberal desire to control markets.

Yeah, neoliberalism isn’t a “US” thing. I do have an agenda though, but it’s not like I hide it.

Just using an idiotic term like “neoliberal” in the context of global politics doesn’t just show you have no understanding of it all, it also just makes you sound ignorant, and pushing an ignorant agenda.

Aside from pronouncing your own ignorance of neoliberalism as referenced above, I think it’s important to note that this entire paragraph says nothing that wouldn’t be just as well expressed with “you’re dumb”.

because a lot of shady people are showing and promising shit they can’t deliver. Trump is the keystone of that ideal.

Empty promises were not what I would consider the exceptional or defining thing about Trump’s campaign. It’s also barely mentioned once in that entire article. Most of the article speaks of how unhappy people are with their current economic circumstances, not about what political challengers promised to do about it.

It’s all about narratives. People are suffering economically due in no small part to economic inequality. In the US, Republicans have a story to tell about how immigrants, or trans people, or atheists are to blame. The job of Democrats is to put the blame where it belongs, with the oligarchs. Democrats won’t do that, so only one narrative remains and that narrative wins by default.

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, incumbents have been removed from office in 40 of 54 elections in Western democracies

This is what happens. Neoliberals trap voters between two nearly identical parties. They try punching blue and life gets worse. Then they try punching red and life gets worse. Then they try punching blue…

Eventually a populist movement rises up. The more conservative party gets swept up and the neoliberal party resists. Left populists threaten power, and right populists don’t, so neoliberals risk defeat by ignoring populism altogether. The populist movement therefore shifts right where it gets traction and fascism breaks out again. That’s how fascism gains a foothold every single time, going all the way back to the French revolution.

The fact that Mexico was the great exception this time around with it’s left wing populist government should tell you something, but apparently it’s something you don’t want to know.

What do you think western establishment political philosophy is? You can pick from neoliberalism or neoconservativism. There’s not much difference.

without any exaggeration, going to result in several thousand dead children.

I sincerely doubt it. The impact is limited to trans children of active service members who do not have a second parent with health insurance. Furthermore, trans healthcare for kids generally means puberty blockers, not surgeries or other expensive interventions. As far as I can gather, that’s about $5k-$12k per year if insurance pays, and likely lower with self pay discounts. That’s easily doable with a GoFundMe.

None of that is to say it’s OK. I’m just addressing the assertion of thousands of deaths.

Nobody should be thrown under the bus, but political reality in a split government says that someone will be. This gave Republicans the hate fix they so desperately wanted with probably less impact than with any other group. I still agree it sucks, but without knowing what the alternatives were, it’s not rational to assume Democrats just didn’t care to do better.

Removed by mod

It’s absolutely the takeaway. Did you even read your own link? It’s not about “incumbents” it’s about “establishments”.

Mexico also had an aging president who named a younger woman as his successor in a 2024 election, and she won in a landslide. The difference was that Obrador and Sheinbaum are left populist. That is despite the fact that Mexico is less educated, more religious, and more culturally conservative.

An overwhelming vote is not the same as an enthusiastic vote. The bill got 100% of the Democratic vote in the executive branch, yet Biden was far from enthusiastic about that provision.

The Democrats had to compromise with Republicans on something, and Republicans choose which issues to compromise on, and which to hold firm to. The Republicans chose trans people, not the Democrats. It’s possible that the Democrats could have offered some other group, but they don’t have the power for it not to screw any vulnerable minority. That bill was never going to arrive at the Senate.

Cowardice and centrism have nothing to do with this bill. I’m the first to agree that Democrats are cowardly centrists, but not in this context. When Democrats have to compromise with Republicans to pass critical legislation, that legislation will definitionally be more “centrist” than the Democrats themselves.

Where cowardly centrism comes into play is in presenting their case to the American people. I absolutely do blame Kamala and her consultants for totally avoiding trans issues in her campaign. But, when the election is done, the country doesn’t operate without compromises with elected Republicans.

I’m not sure why you would assume I got everything I wanted. The trans stuff is just the start of what I don’t like about this funding bill. I also have no doubt that if the Democrats owned both branches that there would still be a lot I don’t like, but I think the trans provision would be gone.

It was unfair of me to say it was your fault that Republicans chose to force the trans issue in this bill. It’s not. It will be your fault when they do it next time though, because you are rewarding them for it.