April 10, 2024

Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

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Money wins elections.

You may have heard Trump raised $50 million last week.

True? Or False?

We will see if the report from the Trump campaign 👇is accurate when the Trump campaign files its financials next quarter.

Trump Raises $50 Million in One Night, but He’s Still Courting His Biggest 2020 Donor.

PALM BEACH, Fla.—Donald Trump used a splashy fundraiser at a billionaire’s mansion here to showcase his consolidation of the Republican megadonor class, pulling in $50.5 million Saturday. But his biggest donor has yet to write a check.

Miriam Adelson—who with her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, were the largest donors to Trump’s 2020 effort with $90 million in contributions—hasn’t yet given to Trump’s 2024 bid. She is among a dwindling number of big-name holdouts, which also include Blackstone Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman and Elliott Management’s Paul Singer.

As Trump faces a better-financed President Biden in what is expected to be the most expensive general election in history, he will need all the help he can get—especially as he siphons some donations for legal bills.

Trump’s Saturday haul would be about double what Biden recently raised in a single event.

“This is likely to be the biggest and one of the most successful fundraising events in political history,” said GOP fundraiser Brian Ballard.

Trump, joined by his wife, Melania, appeared before nearly 120 people and gave a 45-minute speech, according to people in attendance.

Biden’s campaign recently made a splash with a $26 million haul during an event in Manhattan. That event featured the president and two Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Tickets were a couple hundred dollars on the low end, far less than Trump’s high-dollar event. But Democrats were eager to tout the results. ( from WSJ).

Biden and Democrats report raising $90 million-plus in March, stretching their cash lead over Trump.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee said Saturday that they raised more than $90 million in March and ended the year’s first quarter with $192 million-plus in cash on hand, further stretching their money advantage over Donald Trump and the Republicans.

The Biden campaign and its affiliated entities reported collecting $187 million from January through March and said that 96% of all donations were less than $200.

That total was bolstered by the $26 million-plus that Biden reported raising from a March 28 event at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan that featured former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, said it raised $50.5 million from an event Saturday with major donors at the Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson, setting a single-event fundraising record.

Biden’s campaign says the pace of donations has allowed it to undertake major digital and television advertising campaigns in key states and to work with the DNC and state parties to better mobilize would-be supporters before the November election.

The campaign said the $192 million-plus as of March 31 was the highest total ever by any Democratic candidate. About 1.6 million people have donated to the campaign since Biden announced in April 2023 that he was seeking a second term. The campaign raised more than $10 million in the 24 hours after the president’s State of the Union speech in early March.

“The money we are raising is historic, and it’s going to the critical work of building a winning operation, focused solely on the voters who will decide this election -– offices across the country, staff in our battleground states, and a paid media program meeting voters where they are,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. She scoffed at “Trump’s cash-strapped operation that is funneling the limited and billionaire-reliant funds it has to pay off his various legal fees.”

Trump is facing four separate criminal indictments. He and the Republican National Committee reported raising $65.5 million in March and having $93.1 million on hand. As the incumbent in 2020, Trump had a huge campaign treasury when he lost to Biden.

Trump campaign officials have said they do not expect to raise as much as the Democrats, but will have the money they need. The Biden campaign says its strong fundraising shows enthusiasm for the president, defying his low approval ratingsand polls showing that most voters would rather not see a 2020 rematch.

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Jack Smith pushes on Trump claim of immunity.

Prosecutors Ask Supreme Court to Reject Trump’s Immunity Claim in Election Case.

The filing was the main submission from Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting the former president. The case will be argued on April 25.

Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, urged the Supreme Court on Monday to reject Mr. Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution.

“The president’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them,” Mr. Smith wrote.

The filing was Mr. Smith’s main submission in the case, which will be argued on April 25.

He wrote that the novelty of the case underscored its gravity.

“The absence of any prosecutions of former presidents until this case does not reflect the understanding that presidents are immune from criminal liability,” Mr. Smith wrote. “It instead underscores the unprecedented nature of petitioner’s alleged conduct.”

He urged the justices not to lose sight of the basic legal terrain.

“A bedrock principle of our constitutional order,” he wrote, “is that no person is above the law — including the president.” He added, “The Constitution does not give a president the power to conspire to defraud the United States in the certification of presidential-election results, obstruct proceedings for doing so or deprive voters of the effect of their votes.”

Mr. Smith urged the court to move quickly, though he did not directly address the pending election.

When the Supreme Court said in February that it would hear the case, it set what it called an expedited schedule. But it was not particularly fast, with oral arguments scheduled about seven weeks later. That delay was a significant partial victory for Mr. Trump, whose trial had been expected to start March 4.

Even if the court then acts with considerable speed and definitively rules against Mr. Trump within a month, the trial would most likely not start until at least the fall, well into the heart of the presidential campaign. If the court does not rule until late June or returns the case to the lower courts for further consideration of the scope of any immunity, the trial might not take place until after the election.

If Mr. Trump prevails in the election, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.

In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court said it would decide this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

That sentence has been closely scrutinized. On the one hand, it seemed to exclude from consideration Mr. Trump’s argument that his acquittal at his second impeachment trial, on charges that he incited insurrection, blocked any prosecution on similar charges. (Fifty-seven senators voted against him, 10 short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.)

On the other hand, it appeared to leave open the possibility that the court might draw distinctions — or ask lower courts to — between official acts and private ones.

So far, lower courts have rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that he is completely immune from prosecution for acts he took as president.

“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote, “the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed. “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote in an unsigned decision. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

In the brief filed Monday, Mr. Smith relied on a 1974 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Nixon, in which the court ruled that President Richard M. Nixon, then still in office, had to comply with a trial subpoena seeking tapes of his conversations in the Oval Office, rejecting his claims of executive privilege.

“Neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances,” Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote for a unanimous court.

In their own brief filed last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers urged the justices to consider a different decision involving Nixon. That case, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, was brought by an Air Force analyst who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, in 1982, Nixon had been out of office for several years.

The justices ruled for Nixon by a 5-to-4 vote. “In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

That precedent, Mr. Smith wrote on Monday, did not apply in criminal cases.

“This case involves the far weightier interest in vindicating federal criminal law in a prosecution brought by the executive branch itself,” he wrote. “That was not true in Fitzgerald.”

The new case, Trump v. United States, No. 23-939, is just one of three concerning Mr. Trump and the charges against him on the Supreme Court’s docket this term. Last month, the justices rejected a challenge to his eligibility to hold office. And next week, the court will hear arguments over the scope of two of the charges against him in the federal election interference case brought by Mr. Smith.

In his brief filed Monday, Mr. Smith wrote that the stakes are enormous.

“The severity, range and democracy-damaging nature of the alleged crimes are unique in American history,” he wrote. “Other than former President Nixon, whose pardon precluded criminal prosecution, petitioner can point to no former president alleged to have engaged in remotely similar conduct.” (New York Times).

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Trump and Abortion.

Trump’s video on Abortion.

Touch 👇 to watch. 5 minutes.

Michele Goldberg. Trump Says Abortion Will Be Left to the States. Don’t Believe Him.

When Donald Trump was asked about the recent Florida Supreme Court decision upholding his adopted state’s abortion ban, he promised that he would announce where he stands this week — a sign of how tricky the politics of reproductive rights have become for the man who did more than any other to roll them back. Sure enough, on Monday he unveiled his latest position in a video statement that attempted to thread the needle between his anti-abortion base and the majority of Americans who want abortion to be legal.

Trump’s address was, naturally, full of lies, including the absurd claim that “all legal scholars, both sides,” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and the obscene calumny that Democrats support “execution after birth.” But the most misleading part of his spiel was the way he implied that in a second Trump administration, abortion law would be left entirely up to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state,” said Trump.

Trump probably won’t be able to dodge the substance of abortion policy for the entirety of a presidential campaign; eventually, he’s going to have to say whether he’d sign a federal abortion ban if it crossed his desk and what he thinks of the sweeping abortion prohibitions in many Republican states. But let’s leave that aside for the moment, because when it comes to a second Trump administration, the most salient questions are about personnel, not legislation.

Before Monday, Trump reportedly considered endorsing a 16-week national abortion ban, but the fact that he didn’t should be of little comfort to voters who want to protect what’s left of abortion rights in America.

Should Trump return to power, he plans to surround himself with die-hard MAGA activists, not the establishment types he blames for undermining him during his first term. And many of these activists have plans to restrict abortion nationally without passing any new laws at all.

A key to these plans is the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-vice law named for the crusading bluenose Anthony Comstock, who persecuted Margaret Sanger, arrested thousands and boasted of driving 15 of his targets to suicide. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act prohibited the mailing of every “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article,” including “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” intended for “producing abortion.” Until quite recently, the Comstock Act was thought to be moot, made irrelevant by a series of Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment, contraception and abortion. But it was never repealed, and now that Trump’s justices have scrapped Roe, his allies believe they can use Comstock to go after abortion nationwide.

“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan F. Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas and the legal mind behind the state’s abortion bounty law, told The New York Times in February. He is very much a MAGA insider; he represented Trump in the Supreme Court case arising from Colorado’s attempt to boot the ex-president off the ballot as an insurrectionist. As The Times has reported, Mitchell is on a list of lawyers vetted by America First Legal, a nonprofit led by the Trump consigliere Stephen Miller, as having the “spine” to serve in a second Trump administration.

Mitchell is far from the only Trumpist dreaming of bringing Comstock back from the dead. The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a coalition of major right-wing think tanks, has published a 920-page plan for a new Trump administration, “Mandate for Leadership.” In it, Gene Hamilton, America First Legal’s vice president and a former Trump Department of Justice official, lays out an agenda for the department to target abortion medication.

“Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute,” he wrote of Comstock. “The Department of Justice in the next conservative administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.” (“Mandate for Leadership” also says that a Trump Food and Drug Administration should repeal approval for medication abortion.)

A resurrected Comstock Act wouldn’t just stop women from ordering abortion pills through the mail. It could also prevent doctors and pharmacies from dispensing them, since neither the Postal Service nor express carriers like UPS and FedEx would be allowed to ship them in the first place. And it would give the Justice Department a rationale for cracking down on the networks that help provide pills to women in states with abortion bans.

Some interpretations of the Comstock Act might curtail surgical abortion as well, since supplies used to perform them travel through the mail. Abortions could remain legal in some states but become nearly impossible to obtain.

Some anti-abortion leaders, knowing that their schemes are unpopular, don’t want Trump to talk about them before he’s in office. Speaking of Comstock, a movement attorney told The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey: “It’s obviously a political loser, so just keep your mouth shut. Say you oppose a federal ban, and see if that works.”

That is clearly what Trump is trying to do. Whether it works is up to all of us. (Column. New York Times).

Arizona.

In her column that you can read above 👆, Michele Goldberg warns us of MAGA’s desire to use the Comstock Laws, on the books since 1873, to ban abortion. How right she has already proved.

Yesterday, Arizona turned to an older law on the books .. an 1864 law. Yesterday, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 160 year old 1864 abortion ban, put into place before Arizona became a state and before women could vote

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Abortion Jumps to the Center of Arizona’s Key 2024 Races.

The Arizona Supreme Court in 2021. On Tuesday, the court upheld an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions, though it sent the matter back to a lower court to hear additional arguments about the legislation’s constitutionality.

Democrats quickly aimed to capitalize on a ruling by the state’s highest court upholding an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.

Democrats seized on a ruling on Tuesday by Arizona’s highest court upholding an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, setting up a fierce political fight over the issue that is likely to dominate the presidential election and a pivotal Senate race in a crucial battleground state.

Even though the court put its ruling on hold for now, President Biden and his campaign moved quickly to blame former President Donald J. Trump for the loss of abortion rights, noting that he has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned a constitutional right to abortion. Just a day earlier, Mr. Trump had sought to defang what has become a toxic issue for Republicans by saying that abortion restrictions should be decided by the states and their voters.

Mr. Trump offered no immediate response to the decision, but Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for his campaign, said: “President Trump could not have been more clear. These are decisions for people of each state to make.”

Nowhere are the politics of abortion more distilled than in Arizona, where liberal advocates have been pushing for a ballot measure in November that would enshrine abortion rights in the State Constitution. Supporters of the measure say they have already gathered enough signatures to put the question on the ballot ahead of a deadline in early July.

That means the state is likely to be front and center in a national push by Democrats to transform the 2024 race into another referendum on abortion rights.

The issue has emerged as one of the party’s strongest political weapons since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, powering them to a series of electoral victories. The Arizona ruling on Tuesday will pose yet another test for Republicans, who after decades of efforts to limit abortion rights and access have struggled to find a winning message on the issue amid the transformed politics of the post-Roe era.

The 1864 law will not be enforced immediately: In putting its ruling on hold, the court sent the matter back to a lower court to hear additional arguments about the legislation’s constitutionality.

Still, Democrats quickly aimed to capitalize on the news.

“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” President Biden said in a statement minutes after the decision.

Vice President Kamala Harris was also set to travel on Friday to Tucson, Ariz., to talk about the importance of abortion rights — a trip that was fortuitously preplanned, a spokesman said. She has become a leading messenger for the Biden campaign on abortion, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit an abortion clinic. She has also held events on abortion in key battleground states including Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan.

On Tuesday, she squarely blamed Mr. Trump for the court’s decision — a tactic Democrats have taken on abortion nationwide.

“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote — and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” she said in a statement.

The condemnation of the ruling was bipartisan, reflecting the continued power of the issue since the overturning of Roe in 2022. Both candidates in Arizona’s Senate race, which is seen as one of the most important contests for control of the chamber, quickly disavowed the ruling.

Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate, called it “devastating for Arizona women and their families” and warned that “women could die” as a result of the new ban.

More strikingly, Kari Lake, his Republican opponent, echoed his comments, despite having praised the law in the past.

“It is abundantly clear that the pre-statehood law is out of step with Arizonans,” she said in a statement, adding, “This is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual state and her people.”

Democrats quickly blasted out examples of Ms. Lake’s past support for the 19th-century legislation, including comments in which she called it a “great law.”

Polling has shown that Mr. Biden has a clear edge over Mr. Trump on abortion, despite voters’ preference for the former president on almost every other major issue. The political calculus for Mr. Biden and other Democrats is that every day in which abortion is the primary political topic is a better day than one spent discussing the economy, immigration or thorny foreign policy issues.

Since the fall of Roe, Democrats have repeatedly won elections by making abortion the main issue in their campaigns. Last year, a liberal Wisconsin judge won a commanding victory in the state’s crucial Supreme Court race, and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky won re-election in a deep-red state — both by focusing heavily on abortion rights.

The Biden campaign believes abortion rights are one of the strongest issues working in its favor in Arizona, where independents make up about a third of the electorate. In March, 50 percent of registered voters in the state said they trusted Mr. Biden to do a “better job” on abortion, compared with 44 percent for Mr. Trump, a Fox News poll found.

“We have folks across the spectrum who are going to be outraged by this decision and who are going to hold the person who brags about being responsible for it to account,” said Jen Cox, a senior adviser for the Biden campaign in Arizona. “And that’s Donald Trump.”

Abortion providers said they expected to continue performing abortions through May as their lawyers and Democratic lawmakers search for new legal arguments and additional tactics to delay the ruling.

If reinstated, the law would pre-empt the state’s current restriction on abortion after 15 weeks with a total ban outlawing the procedure from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the mother. The 1864 law contains no exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors prosecuted under the law could face fines and prison terms of two to five years.

Leaders of the anti-abortion movement celebrated the ruling as a major step forward.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group, praised the ruling as an “enormous victory for unborn children and their mothers,” saying her movement “must continue to fight.”

But they largely stood alone in their support for the ruling. Some Arizona Republicans who are facing competitive re-election fights criticized the decision, despite their past opposition to abortion rights.

Representative Juan Ciscomani, who said in 2022 that abortion law should be left to the states, called the ruling a “disaster for women and providers.” And Representative David Schweikert, who previously expressed support for the overturning of Roe and for abortion bans, wrote on social media, “This issue should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench.”

Still, the Arizona ruling underscored the political limitations of efforts by Republicans to skirt specific questions about the future of abortion access in more conservative states.

In Mr. Trump’s remarks on Monday, he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother, but he did not offer an opinion on whether state bans that do not include those caveats — like the one in Arizona — should stand. (New York Times).

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In 2024, a Constitutional measure enshrining abortion in the Arizona Constitution will be on the ballot.

So too will be some members of the Arizona Supreme Court who brought this 1864 law back to life.

The State Legislature could vote to eliminate this 1864 law before November. The Republican Party controls both chambers of the state legislature.

Touch 👇 to watch the Vice President respond to what happened in Arizona yesterday.

Touch 👇 to watch Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.

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The Debate on Transgender Athletes heats up.

NAIA bans transgender athletes from women's sports

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at its 241 mostly small colleges across the country.

The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote at its annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes competing in more than 25 sports, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.

According to the transgender participation policy, which goes into effect in August, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in intercollegiate competition.

NAIA programs in competitive cheer and competitive dance are open to all students. The NAIA policy notes every other sport “includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes.”

NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr said in an interview with The Associated Press he understands the policy will generate controversy but that it was deemed best for member schools for competitive reasons.

“We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that,” Carr said. “But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.”

The NAIA’s 2023-24 policy did not bar transgender and nonbinary athletes from competing in the division of their choice in the regular season. In the postseason, and with some exceptions for those who have had hormone therapy, athletes had to compete in the division of their birth sex.

There is no known number of transgender athletes at the high school and college levels, though it is believed to be small.

The topic has become a hot-button issue among conservative groups and others who believe transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

Shiwali Patel, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said her organization was outraged by the NAIA policy.

“This is unacceptable and blatant discrimination that not only harms trans, nonbinary and intersex individuals, but limits the potential of all athletes,” Patel said in a statement. “It’s important to recognize that these discriminatory policies don’t enhance fairness in competition. Instead, they send a message of exclusion and reinforce dangerous stereotypes that harm all women.”

Last month, more than a dozen current and former college athletes filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA, accusing the sports governing body for more than 500,000 athletes of violating their rights by allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.

Hours after the NAIA announcement, the NCAA released a statement: “College sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships.”

At least 24 states have laws barring transgender women and girls from competing in certain women’s or girls sports competitions.

The Biden administration originally planned to release a new federal Title IX rule — the law forbids discrimination based on sex in education — addressing both campus sexual assault and transgender athletes. Earlier this year, the department decided to split them into separate rules, and the athletics rule now remains in limbo.

“It’s similar to the NIL stuff with all these different state laws,” said Kasey Havekost, a former Division I athlete who is now a higher education attorney at Bricker Graydon. “The NCAA kind of does something but nothing really happens, and they look to the federal government, and the federal government is slow to put something in place and then we’re left with all these different state laws.”

Havekost expects lawsuits will follow and challenge the NAIA policy on the basis of Title IX laws.

“I feel like at some point, it will have to be addressed,” she said. “It’s a really complex issue. It might take a Supreme Court ruling.”

About 190 of the 241 NAIA schools are private, and about 125 of those have religious affiliations of varying degrees, Carr said. Of the 20 presidents who voted, 17 are from schools affiliated with Christian denominations.

“People have certain views of the world, and even though I believe all our Council of Presidents members are trying to think what’s best for the NAIA, they certainly come to these kinds of issues with their own beliefs and the missions of their institutions in mind,” Carr said. “I would think that had some impact.”

Patel said the NAIA ban, along with the state laws, “emphasizes the urgency in having clear Title IX rules that expressly prohibit this type of sex-based discrimination, and ensure the rights of all students, including transgender, nonbinary, and intersex athletes, are safeguarded. Trans athletes deserve a chance to play.”

The NCAA has had a policy for transgender athlete participation in place since 2010, which called for one year of testosterone suppression treatment and documented testosterone levels submitted before championship competitions. In 2022, the NCAA revised its policies on transgender athlete participation in an attempt to align with national sport governing bodies, following the lead of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

The three-phase implementation of the policy included a continuation of the 2010 policy, requiring transgender women to be on hormone replacement therapy for at least one year, plus the submission of a hormone-level test before the start of both the regular season and championship events.

The third phase adds national and international sport governing body standards to the NCAA’s policy and — after a delay — is scheduled to be implemented for the 2024-25 school year on Aug. 1.

There are some 15.3 million public high school students in the United States and a 2019 study by the CDC estimated 1.8% of them — about 275,000 — are transgender. The number of athletes within that group is much smaller; a 2017 survey by Human Rights Campaign suggested fewer than 15% of all transgender boys and transgender girls play sports.

The number of NAIA transgender athletes would be far smaller.

One more thing.

Sue Bird endorses Dawn Staley, approves transgender athletes to play women's basketball | Marca

The dialogue surrounding transgender athletes in sports has been a sensitive and complex issue, with no definitive resolution to include them seamlessly. However, South Carolina Ga

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The Arts - Art,Music,Theatre - are still in crisis.

Covid left our arts, our artists and our arts communities with painful and long term damage.

As to theatre in particular,

Even Broadway is not fully back.

At 90% of its grosses in 2019, Broadway show after show will close, even 5 years since the first Covid-19 infection.

Our smaller theatres are hurting even more.

Dark theatres leave our people and our communities less alive. They leave our performers and playwrights, designers, musicians and theatre workers without employment and outlets for creativity, and leave would-be audiences without stories, understandings, empathy and community. Dark theatres leave the world a darker place.

Some Democratic legislators are trying to help. 👇 Vote for them. Write to them. Support them.You can help. Go to the Theatre. Donate to the Theatre.

Nonprofit Theaters Are in Trouble. Lawmakers Are Proposing Help.

Proposed legislation would allocate $1 billion annually for an industry coping with rising expenses and smaller audiences.

The financial crisis facing nonprofit theaters in America has captured the attention of Congress, where a group of Democratic lawmakers is introducing legislation that would direct $1 billion annually to the struggling industry for five years.

That money could be used for payroll and workforce development, as well as other expenses like rent, set-building and marketing. But the legislation, which lawmakers introduced on Tuesday, faces long odds at a time when a divided Congress — where Republicans control the House and Democrats lead the Senate — has had trouble agreeing on anything.

Nonprofit theaters around the country have reduced their programming and laid off workers to cope with rising expenses and smaller audiences since the coronavirus pandemic began. There are exceptions — some nonprofit theaters say they are thriving — but several companies, including New Repertory Theater in suburban Boston, Southern Rep Theater in New Orleans, and Book-It Repertory Theater in Seattle, have ceased or suspended operations in response to the crisis.

“It hasn’t been a recovery for the nonprofits — they’re really lagging compared to many other sectors in the economy, and it’s for a lot of reasons,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, one of the legislation’s sponsors, said in an interview. “So they do need help.”

Mr. Welch argued that the organizations merit government assistance because they strengthen communities and benefit local economies.

The legislation, which is called the Supporting Theater and the Arts to Galvanize the Economy (STAGE) Act of 2024, is also being sponsored by Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. Representative Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon is sponsoring it in the House.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who is the majority leader and who led the fight to win government aid for performing arts organizations during the pandemic, is supportive of the proposed legislation and is also open to other ways to assist nonprofit theaters, according to a spokesman.

The pandemic aid package that Mr. Schumer championed serves as a precedent: In 2020, Congress passed the Save Our Stages Act, which led to a $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program that made money available to a wide array of commercial and nonprofit performing arts organizations.

Mr. Welch said the earlier aid program succeeded despite initial skepticism.

“With everything else that was going on, the expectation was this would die on the vine, but it didn’t — as this started getting momentum, there was excitement about being about to do something concrete,” he said.

The new legislation is narrower, benefiting only professional nonprofit theaters, and only those that have either seen a decline in revenues or that primarily serve historically underserved communities.

“This is a beginning,” Mr. Welch said. “There are obstacles, but let the effort begin.” (New York Times).

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