Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalHospitalized, Bullied, and Denied Care: Texas' War on Trans Kids
After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state officials in February to launch child abuse investigations targeting parents who helped their transgender kids get gender-affirming health care, a 14-year-old trans girl became so anxious about the prospect of losing access to her medications that she was pulled out of school and hospitalized for days. Some doctors and pharmacies around the state stopped offering teenagers life-saving puberty blockers and hormone treatments. A mental health provider in Austin abruptly withdrew care from a suicidal trans boy, leaving his parents to sleep on his bedroom floor night after night to ensure he didn’t kill himself. Many families fled the state.
Those are just some of the stories in a legal brief submitted to a state court last week on behalf of two LGBTQ-focused nonprofits and 13 Texas families with transgender kids. The families are begging the court to make permanent a prior temporary injunction prohibiting state officials from investigating parents under Abbott’s order. Although Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services hasn’t yet ripped any trans children in Texas from their homes and sent them to foster care, the families argue its investigations have already had tragic consequences.
Since Abbott’s directive took effect, the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT), one of the nonprofits cited in the brief, has received at least 60 reports from families struggling to obtain health care for trans children. Some doctors reportedly denied prescriptions for kids at the onset of puberty, hoping that it might be legally safer to offer them treatment at a later point. The nonprofit is working with 27 families in two metro areas who could not obtain puberty blockers, reversible prescriptions that give trans kids a chance to explore their gender identity as they grow older while temporarily delaying the puberty changes in their body that could make their gender dysphoria worse. Equality Texas, the other nonprofit in the brief, says kids have been turned away by doctors or denied prescriptions at pharmacies in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and the city of Garland.
Families say they’re also afraid to get their trans children other types of health care, worried that the kids’ gender identity and medical history might become known to the hospital and be shared with state authorities. According to the brief, when one trans kid went to a hospital for emergency psychiatric treatment, hospital staffers reported the mother to state officials, who accused her of child abuse. In another case, a trans child almost slept in a hallway at a mental health facility because the facility, citing legal risks, didn’t want to admit the kid to a ward. TENT intervened.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/hospitalized-bullied-and-denied-care-texas-war-on-trans-kids/
Rot in hell, Hot Wheels.
A notorious fringe message board is facing calls for its shutdown after life-threatening harassment
Kiwi Farms is an internet message board known for being an epicenter of vicious, anti-trans harassment campaigns. It has operated for nearly a decade with the backing of some tech companies that refuse to drop services for it. But now, as the site’s users launch a wave of anti-trans attacks, a trans Twitch streamer targeted by Kiwi Farms is spearheading an unprecedented campaign to take down the fringe website.
Clara Sorrenti and those supporting her are hoping to open up Kiwi Farms to debilitating virtual attacks by demanding Cloudflare, one of its internet security service vendors, drop the site. Cloudflare has so far refused to budge.
In a public statement posted Wednesday, under Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s byline, the company said that it will not drop security services for any of its customers. (The statement did not mention Kiwi Farms by name.) A Cloudflare representative referred NBC News to the blog post when reached for comment.
If the ongoing efforts to close the forum fail, experts warn Kiwi Farms’ target list and techniques could expand as culture war issues gain more attention ahead of the 2024 election, potentially affecting more LGBTQ private citizens or creating a national security threat with the expansion of Kiwi Farms’ harassment tactics to new targets.
Kiwi Farms has become synonymous with doxxing (the release of an individual’s identifying information with malicious intent), swatting (a term for when an anonymous person sends an urgent, false tip to the police about a violent crime in a victim’s home in the hopes that law enforcement will raid it and potentially harm the person inside), and archiving controversial materials such as manifestos by mass shooters and recordings of their livestreams.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-keffals-anti-trans-rcna44834
Never heard of this outfit, but they sound horrible
When rap lyrics are used against you in court: 'They silenced me for 21 years'
In 2000, McKinley “Mac” Phipps Jr was a 22-year-old rising rap star when he was arrested for murder.
A 19-year-old had been shot at a Slidell, Louisiana club where Phipps was due to perform, and police quickly zeroed in on the artist as the suspect. A man who was working security at the venue confessed that he had killed the teenager, but still prosecutors pushed forward with a trial against Phipps.
Authorities had no physical evidence or weapon tying Phipps to the murder, but they had something else to bring to court: Phipps’ rap lyrics.
“‘Murder, murder, kill, kill’; ‘Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head.’ Those are some of the lyrics that this defendant chooses to rap when he performs,” the prosecutor told an all-white jury, according to a recent NPR report.
Phipps was convicted and given a 30-year sentence.
Last week, California lawmakers passed new regulations meant to restrict such use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal court, the first-of-its-kind legislation expected to become law in the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/03/california-mckinley-mac-phipps-rap-music-black-rappers
Blatant violation of First Amendment rights
Ohio man who suffered 20,000 bee-stings expected to recover, family says
An Ohio man who was stung at least 20,000 times by bees – and even ingested some of the insects – during a mishap while he was cutting tree branches is expected to recover, according to his family.
Austin Bellamy, 20, climbed high into a lemon tree in Ripley, Ohio, last Friday to help trim it when he mistakenly cut into a bees’ nest, his mother, Shawna Carter, has recounted, in addition to authorities’ accounts of his injuries.
“When he started cutting them, that’s when the bees came out, and he tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t … He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ And nobody would help him,” his grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
According to Carter, Bellamy was unable to get down from the tree because he was harnessed. Edwards watched from below alongside Bellamy’s uncle as they were unable to climb the ladder since they were also under attack by the bees.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/02/ohio-man-20000-bee-stings-recover
Putin's Private Army Accused of Most Heinous Massacre Yet
EBAM, Cameroon—It was the “most barbaric” act of violence Nas Ali said he has witnessed since the Central African Republic (CAR) welcomed Russian mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group, which some have called Vladimir Putin’s “private army,” about four years ago.
While having a conversation with a female friend under a mango tree about 50 meters away from his home, and having a good view of his compound from where they both stood in the western CAR village of Bèzèrè, the 32-year-old said he watched from afar as about a dozen Russian paramilitaries, who appeared from nowhere, dragged the wives of two of his neighbors out of the compound, stabbed them in their abdomen and then disemboweled the two women.
“The women were screaming and begging for mercy,” Ali, who now lives as a refugee in Cameroon, told The Daily Beast. “The white soldiers [as many in CAR refer to Wagner mercenaries as] didn’t listen. They killed the women and removed their stomach and intestines.”
The incident, according to Ali and another witness, occurred on Dec. 6 last year. They said at least six other women in Bèzèrè were killed in the same manner across the village.
“As I was leaving the village, I saw the body of a woman who was pregnant,” Malik Tete, a 29-year-old bricklayer who fled Bèzèrè to Cameroon after the incident, told The Daily Beast. “They had cut her open, removed her baby and her intestines and left them on top of her dead body.”
Following the violence in Bèzèrè, thousands of people, according to Ali and Tete, fled the village to Bocaranga, about 27 kilometers southeast of Bèzèrè. Many others, including the witnesses, sought refuge in settlements for refugees in the eastern part of Cameroon.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/wagner-group-accused-of-disemboweling-women-in-the-central-african-republic?ref=home
Police berated a boy, 5, who ran away from school. They were suspended and sued.
Two Maryland police officers who berated and threatened a 5-year-old boy who had run off from school were suspended without pay, according to newly released police records of the encounter that went viral last spring and was condemned nationwide.
The sanctions, details of which emerged as a separate lawsuit over the incident was settled for $275,000, came after a lengthy internal affairs investigation by the Montgomery County Police Department. In that probe, Officers Dionne Holliday and Kevin Christmon voiced both regrets and justifications for how they treated the East Silver Spring Elementary School student over the course of the 51-minute encounter.
“I really do think that my actions were appropriate at the time, because of the fact the child was acting noncompliant,” Christmon said when asked specifically about holding the child down in a chair for 80 seconds at his school.
Holliday told investigators that raising her voice at the child probably didn’t solve anything. She acknowledged telling the boy he should be beaten and calling him “a shepherd for the devil,” but asserted that’s how he was acting.
Their views of what transpired also played out during 18 months of separate, contentious litigation during which their attorneys criticized the boy and said it would be difficult to gauge what effect the incident had on him. “This child had a lot of problems before this event,” an attorney for the officers asserted in court this summer.
Such claims, countered attorneys for the boy and his mother, trivialized what he was put through. Uniformed officers shouted in his face. One compared him to a “little beast” who should be placed in a crate. “Way past the line of emotional child abuse,” lawyers James Papirmeister and Matthew Bennett wrote in court filings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/yelling-police-suspended-child/?itid=hp-more-top-stories
What big, brave cops!
Insurance Refused to Cover Her Vomiting Condition. So She Barfed Outside Their Office.
After repeatedly being denied coverage for treatment that would help alleviate symptoms of the illness that had been causing her to vomit constantly for the last three years—sometimes making it impossible to keep even a cup of water down—Sandy Honig was, in her words, in a “very, very dark place and feeling hopeless.”
“It’s hard to get up in the morning when the first thing you have to do is drink a cup of water, and that makes you sick,” Honig told VICE News.
Honig suffers from gastroparesis, or partial paralysis of the stomach that prevents the stomach from fully emptying. “Anything that I eat or drink makes me really nauseous,” she told VICE News Thursday. “I don’t really eat meals… socially, sometimes that ends up happening, but then I always end up in the bathroom.”
One of the most common treatments for gastroparesis when medication is ineffective is a Botox injection, which helps relax the part of the stomach connecting to the small intestine so the body can more easily digest food. But although Honig’s doctors recommended the treatment after more than a half-dozen medications failed to alleviate her symptoms, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield denied her coverage for the injections, saying they weren’t medically necessary.
So Honig decided to give her health insurance company a look at just exactly what she’s been dealing with.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7d8w/sandy-honig-vomit-video-anthem
Health insurance is a scam. Anthem sucks. Single payer NOW!
Biden's long game for American-made electric vehicles
By Rebecca HeilweilMuch hay has been made about how the Inflation Reduction Act represents America’s biggest climate investment ever. But reading between the lines of the legislation, which tackles everything from taxes to health care, shows that the nearly $740 billion law has some caveats, including new provisions to a more than decade-old EV tax credit.
For years, prospective electric vehicle buyers could count on a federal vehicle tax credit, which amounts to a $7,500 discount on a wide range of EV models. The incentive was originally authorized in 2008 and played a critical part in promoting early EV startups and encouraging price-conscious consumers to take the plunge and go electric. The IRA extends the tax credit until 2032 and establishes an additional $4,000 credit for used EVs.
But there are new rules, too, for a vehicle to qualify for that credit. The final assembly of any qualified vehicles must take place in North America, and the credit will also hinge on the vehicle’s size, its total cost, and potential buyers’ income. Starting before 2024, at least 40 percent of the critical minerals and at least half of the battery components used to build new eligible EVs will need to come from the US or one of its free trade partners to access the full credit.
But for most consumers, the new tax credit could prove elusive. Around 70 percent of the electric, hydrogen, and hybrid cars currently sold in the US won’t be eligible for the credit, according to the Alliance of Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents the car industry. An August analysis of the IRA proposal from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only about 11,000 vehicles could receive the credit in 2023, and around 60,000 vehicles in 2024, according to an August analysis of the IRA proposal. While the Internal Revenue Service is charged with determining which vehicles are eligible, experts told Recode that they expect very few cars to receive the credit over the next several years, especially since the law’s sourcing requirements are designed to become more stringent.
But that may not be the case forever. The tax credit is only one part of the Biden administration’s plan for a new era of American auto manufacturing, which includes everything from a new push to rethink mining regulations to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act’s $3 billion investment in the domestic battery supply chain. Together, these efforts, and a surge in new EV factories based in the US, could make American-made electric vehicles much more common in the latter part of the decade. At the same time, this credit won’t necessarily disincentivize people from buying EVs that are made abroad, especially as electric vehicle prices decline and as geopolitics continue to complicate the world’s access to fossil fuels.
https://www.vox.com/recode/23331223/electric-vehicles-biden-ev-inflation-reduction-act
Mom sues Alabama youth facility where son died by suicide to escape 'living hell'
The mother of a 15-year-old Alabama boy who died days after sustaining self-inflicted injuries at a youth psychiatric treatment facility claims in a wrongful death lawsuit that her son was trapped in “a living hell” — but his pleas for help were ignored.
Connor Bennett, who died in April, was held for about six months at a former Sequel TSI facility in Tuskegee, a place the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Macon County, describes as “scary and dangerous despite being a place for the most vulnerable and troubled children.”
“The facility was a living hell for Connor,” the lawsuit states, adding that “violence was rampant” and there was “little to no supervision.”
“As a result, on numerous occasions, Connor was horrifically brutalized sexually, physically, and emotionally by other residents,” the lawsuit states. “He was living an unimaginable nightmare and always feared for his safety.”
Bennett, according to the complaint, “suffered from behavioral issues” that prompted the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) to take custody of him in September 2021. A month later, he was dispatched to the Tuskegee facility.
The facility, which started operations in 1998, describes itself as a residential treatment facility that provides “comprehensive, challenging, and therapeutic services for adolescent males ages 12 to 18. Boys are assigned to the program by the Alabama Department of Youth Services following a court decision. It has since been rebranded under the name Brighter Path.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mom-sues-alabama-youth-facilty-sequel-tsi-son-died-suicide-escape-livi-rcna45729
Her attorney said in a statement that the Tuskegee facility and facilities like it are a part of the “troubled teen industry,” a multibillion-dollar network of for-profit youth residential facilities where widespread abuse and neglect have been revealed. I can believe that.
Are Trump's Passports the FBI's Smoking Gun?
Barbara McQuadeWhen the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this month, they didn’t find a smoking gun, but they did find some smoldering passports.
On August 8, agents removed from Trump’s home 33 boxes of sensitive government documents, including more than 100 records classified at the highest levels. In a 36-page brief responding to Trump’s motion to appoint a special master to review the material seized by the FBI, the Justice Department explained that three of the classified documents were recovered from Trump’s private office, known as “the 45 Office.”
According to DOJ’s recent brief, classified documents in that office were “commingled” in a desk drawer with three passports. While the government did not disclose the name on the passports, Trump himself has complained that during the search, the FBI “stole” his three passports. It seems a safe bet that the passports DOJ recovered were Trump’s.
The significance of the passports is enormous. As DOJ explained in an understated footnote, “The location of the passports is relevant evidence in an investigation of unauthorized retention and mishandling of national defense information.”
In other words, the presence of the passports in the same drawer as the classified records tends to tie the unauthorized possession of these documents to Trump himself. A photo included with the filing shows the items that were recovered from his office. Among the classification markings on the documents are “Top Secret,” meaning that the disclosure of the material could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/are-trumps-passports-the-fbis-smoking-gun?ref=home
Confiscating his passports could be the best move ever.
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