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This is Gavin Newsom normalizing fascism [1]
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Date: 2025-03-09
Right out of the fascism playbook
For the first episode of “This is Gavin Newsom,” the governor sat down with conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk for a discussion about the state of the Democratic Party. According to Mediaite, Newsom asked Kirk for “advice” and argued that people “need to understand your success.” (Kirk, a conservative influencer and ally of President Donald Trump, whose policies have had a devastating effect on LGBTQ+ youth, likely has no insight into what messages can benefit the left.) “Would you say ‘no’ to men in female sports?” Kirk asked the governor. “Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness; it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom replied. “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.” During their 75-minute tête-à-tête, Kirk also encouraged Newsom to speak out against AB Hernandez, a transgender high school track star from California who has received backlash from conservatives after setting the record for the highest triple jump in the girls’ competition. In response to a question about Hernandez, according to Politico, Newsom went off on a tangent about his four children and noted that he and his wife both participated in college-level sports. “I revere sports, so the issue of fairness is entirely legitimate,” Newsom stated. “And I saw that—the last couple of years, boy did I [see] how you guys were able to exploit that issue at another level.” Politico noted that Kirk debated Newsom’s use of the word “exploit,” which Newsom replaced with “highlight.” —Daily Kos, “Turns out Gavin Newsom and Charlie Kirk actually agree on something”, March 6, 2024
Good grief.
You want to talk about fairness?
What could be more unfair than denying people the right to decide for themselves their own gender identity?
That’s what this is all about.
It’s a fascist agenda.
It’s about targeting a minority. It’s about stripping people of their dignity and their autonomy.
It’s about the slew of laws passed in recent years to deny gender-affirming health care for minors. In just a few years the number of states banning this health care has gone from zero to 25:
These claims [that such care is experimental/dangerous] — and the speed at which lawmakers have acted on them — mystify Dr. Kade Goepferd, chief education officer and medical director of Children's Minnesota's gender health program. Goepferd has provided the same kind of care for gender-diverse kids for 20 years. “There's no new way that we're approaching this care. There's no new medications that we're using. There was no new groundbreaking research study that came out — nothing has changed,” they say. “If anything, the care has become more standardized, more guideline-based.” All major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the American Psychological Association, support gender-affirming care as safe and necessary.
In a few months, the Supreme Court will announce its decision, in United States v. Skrmetti, on whether these state bans violate the Constitution. I’m afraid there’s little hope we’ll be surprised by a court which overturned Roe. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to nationalize the state bans by executive order. In January, he ordered a ban on gender-affirming care for people under age 19 by all hospitals and clinics which receive federal funding. This order has since been blocked by a federal judge, who made clear in his temporary injunction the "potentially catastrophic" consequences of denying this medically essential care.
On day one of this fascist regime, by executive order it became the official policy of the United States government to try to delegitimize — to try to erase —transgender and nonbinary people.
How sick — or ironically appropriate — that a science-denying insurrectionist sexual predator scrawled his signature onto a list of edicts with the Orwellian title “Defending Women from Extremist Gender Ideology and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Drumming up resentment and fear over kids’ sports diverts attention from the vileness of this fascist program.
Youths who happen to play sports and happen to be superlative at it and happen to be transgender are a fraction of a fraction of a minority — a minority whom this fascist regime wants erased.
But rather than decrying the fascist regime, Gavin Newsom is decrying the potential unfairness that occasionally, somewhere, there could be a competition where an out-group kid outperforms the in-group kids.
The notion that an out-group minority is enjoying special, undeserved privileges to the detriment of the in-group majority is an old story.
Right out of the fascist playbook.
And Gov. Newsom is playing along. He “totally agrees.”
Newsom’s stated goal is to help the Democratic Party to do better electorally, and it’s safe to assume he also has presidential ambitions. There are lots of ways to further either of those goals. The way he’s picked here is repugnant and dangerous. It’s also foolish. As Harry Truman said: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”
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