"[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.

"Of course they despise Washington. Notice the graffiti '1619' on the toppled statue...."

Of course they despise Washington. Notice the graffiti “1619” on the toppled statue. And the burnt flags. The NYT must be proud. They taught these people well. https://t.co/4JTPEv2KMd

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 19, 2020

"There is little or no liberal space in this revolutionary movement for genuine, respectful disagreement, regardless of one’s identity, or even open-minded exploration."

"In fact, there is an increasingly ferocious campaign to quell dissent, to chill debate, to purge those who ask questions, and to ruin people for their refusal to swallow this reductionist ideology whole. The orthodoxy goes further than suppressing contrary arguments and shaming any human being who makes them. It insists, in fact, that anything counter to this view is itself a form of violence against the oppressed. The reason some New York Times staffers defenestrated op-ed page editor James Bennet was that he was, they claimed, endangering the lives of black staffers by running a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, who called for federal troops to end looting, violence, and chaos, if the local authorities could not. This framing equated words on a page with a threat to physical life — the precise argument many students at elite colleges have been using to protect themselves from views that might upset them.... In this manic, Manichean world you’re not even given the space to say nothing. 'White Silence = Violence' is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. It’s very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. The cultishness of this can be seen in the way people are actually cutting off contact with their own families if they don’t awaken and see the truth and repeat its formulae.... If you argue that you believe that much of this ideology is postmodern gobbledygook, you are guilty of 'white fragility.' If you say you are not fragile, and merely disagree, this is proof you are fragile. It is the same circular argument that was once used to burn witches. And it has the same religious undertones...."

From "Is There Still Room for Debate?" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).

"We can say we’re going to cancel her, but she’s going to get money for the rest of her life."

Said J’Neia Stewart, whose “House of Black Podcast,” looks at the "Harry Potter" series in terms of social justice, quoted in "Harry Potter Fans Reimagine Their World Without Its Creator/A slice of fandom divides itself from J.K. Rowling" (NYT). Also:

“J.K. Rowling gave us Harry Potter; she gave us this world,” said Renae McBrian, a young adult author who volunteers for the fan site MuggleNet. “But we created the fandom, and we created the magic and community in that fandom. That is ours to keep.”...

For Talia Franks, who is nonbinary and works with an activist group called the Harry Potter Alliance, Ms. Rowling’s comments were disturbing and demoralizing. But they said that they won’t have a problem continuing to write their fan fiction (where queer characters abound), attend Wizard Rock concerts and participate in the online Black Girls Create community, where they often discuss “Harry Potter.”

“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,” Mx. Franks said.

ADDED:

This is the most absurdly biased piece, which cannot even explore the core issue Rowling was discussing. This is why the NYT is becoming unreadable. Woke dreck like this. https://t.co/2OgGY5sIQV

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 13, 2020

"Rose Byrne’s Gloria Steinem comes off as a vacillating, shallow, vain egomaniac; Tracey Ullman’s Betty Friedan strongly suggests that her feminist anger..."

"... came out of crushed romantic dreams; Bella Abzug is only slightly more appealing — but largely because her pragmatism seems so sane in comparison with the antics of her fellows.... And what the series gets so right about left-wing identitarianism is how riddled it often is with jealousy, personal rivalry, and internal spats... The intersection, if you’ll forgive my using that word, of glamour and elite left-wing politics is pretty damning of both. The feminists completely underestimated Schlafly, because their vain self-regard could not believe that any serious pushback against the ERA could be rooted in real arguments about the difference between the sexes rather than their interchangeability.... Schlafly’s version of feminism is, in fact, less a reactionary one than a truly prescient one. She was the first feminist (though she would reject that label) to depict traditional home and family life as something not to be despised, as long as women had the choice to abandon it.... This is the first time I’ve seen a conservative woman portrayed as human, complicated, vulnerable, and also extraordinarily courageous."

Andrew Sullivan praises the Hulu movie-biography of Phyllis Schlafly (in NY Magazine).

Here's the trailer (with Cate Blanchett in the starring role):

"By Biden’s Own Standards, He Is Guilty As Charged."

Headline at the new Andrew Sullivan column (in NY Magazine). Excerpt:

Perhaps in part to atone for his shabby treatment of Anita Hill, Biden was especially prominent in the Obama administration’s overhaul of Title IX treatment of claims of sexual discrimination and harassment on campus. You can listen to Biden’s strident speeches and rhetoric on this question and find not a single smidgen of concern with the rights of the accused. Men in college were to be regarded as guilty before being proven innocent, and stripped of basic rights in their self-defense....

In 2014, the Obama administration issued another guidance for colleges which expanded what “sexual violence” could include, citing “a range of behaviors that are unwanted by the recipient and include remarks about physical appearance; persistent sexual advances that are undesired by the recipient; unwanted touching; and unwanted oral, anal, or vaginal penetration or attempted penetration.” By that standard, ignoring the Reade allegation entirely, Joe Biden has been practicing “sexual violence” for decades: constantly touching women without their prior consent, ruffling and smelling their hair, making comments about their attractiveness, coming up from behind to touch their back or neck. You can see him do it on tape, on countless occasions.

Of course, his argument about all of that is that it wasn't sexual. Who thinks that hair smelling and neck nuzzling was a sexual advance on all those little girls (even if it always was on girls and not boys)?

He did not stop in 2014, to abide by the standards he was all too willing to impose on college kids. A vice-president could do these things with impunity; a college sophomore could have his life ruined for an inept remark.

Biden is now claiming simply that he never did what Tara Reade said he did. Let’s posit that he didn’t. Too bad.... By Biden’s own standards, he’s guilty as charged. He never got affirmative consent from Reade, and she feels and believes he assaulted her.

He says the entire incident didn't occur. There was no gym-bag-in-the-corridor encounter at all. Or... was there? Did Mika nail that down or not??

He never got affirmative consent for countless handsy moves over the decades that unsettled some of the recipients of such affection. End of story. By Biden’s own logic, it is irrelevant that he didn’t mean to harm or discomfit anyone, that Reade’s story may have changed over time, that she might have mixed motives, that she has a record of erratic behavior, a bizarre love for Vladimir Putin, and a stated preference for Bernie Sanders, who was Biden’s chief rival. It’s irrelevant that she appeared to tweet that she would wait to launch her accusations against Biden until the timing was right. And her cause has been championed by the Bernie brigade. The many red flags and question marks in her case are largely irrelevant under Biden’s own campus standards....

Bottom line: "I’ll vote for him anyway, because Trump."

"So we have created a scenario which has mercifully slowed the virus’s spread, but, as we are now discovering, at the cost..."

"... of a potentially greater depression than in the 1930s, with no assurance of any progress yet visible. If we keep this up for six months, we could well keep the deaths relatively low and stable, but the economy would all but disintegrate. Just because Trump has argued that the cure could be worse than the disease doesn’t mean it isn’t potentially true. The previously unimaginable levels of unemployment and the massive debt-fueled outlays to lessen the blow simply cannot continue indefinitely. We have already, in just two months, wiped out all the job gains since the Great Recession. In six months? The wreckage boggles the mind. All of this is why, [on] some days, I can barely get out of bed. It is why protests against our total shutdown, while puny now, will doubtless grow. The psychological damage — not counting the physical toll — caused by this deeply unnatural way of life is going to intensify.... Damon Linker put it beautifully this week: 'A life without forward momentum is to a considerable extent a life without purpose — or at least the kind of purpose that lifts our spirits and enlivens our steps as we traverse time. Without the momentum and purpose, we flounder. A present without a future is a life that feels less worth living, because it’s a life haunted by a shadow of futility.'... We keep postponing herd immunity, if such a thing is even possible with this virus. A massive testing, tracing, and quarantining regime seems beyond the capacity of our federal government in the foreseeable future... [S]ometimes the only way past something is through it."

Writes Andrew Sullivan in "We Can’t Go on Like This Much Longer" (New York Magazine).

ADDED: Damon Linker may "put it beautifully," but to write  "Without the momentum and purpose, we flounder" is to be on the wrong side of the flounder/founder distinction.

"Flounder" is a fish, and the verb means to struggle, and that takes some "momentum and purpose." To "founder" is to collapse, to fall helplessly to the ground... without momentum.

"These weeks of confinement can be seen also, it seems to me, as weeks of a national retreat, a chance to reset and rethink our lives, to ponder their fragility."

"I learned one thing in my 20s and 30s in the AIDS epidemic: Living in a plague is just an intensified way of living. It merely unveils the radical uncertainty of life that is already here, and puts it into far sharper focus. We will all die one day, and we will almost all get sick at some point in our lives; none of this makes sense on its own (especially the dying part). The trick, as the great religions teach us, is counterintuitive: not to seize control, but to gain some balance and even serenity in absorbing what you can’t."

Writes Andrew Sullivan in "How to Survive a Plague" (New York Magazine).