By Ann Rostow–
Keep Hope Alive
The best article I’ve read lately is titled “Don’t Believe Him,” by Ezra Klein in The New York Times. The barrage of gasp-inducing headlines, the firehose of astounding maneuvers, the shredding of the Constitution or so it seems—this “flooding the zone,” Klein writes, disguises the incompetence of the nascent Trump administration.
Some of what Trump has actually done is within his executive power; nominating whack jobs to his cabinet, removing security teams from former military aides and so forth. But many of his pronouncements are so much hot air. Some of Trump’s critics are so demoralized that they underestimate the power of the federal courts. But they shouldn’t do that. Already the courts have stopped or paused a lot of crazy stuff. Musk’s “fork in the road” memo, Trump’s birthright citizenship order, the weird spending freeze, the removal of medical care from transgender inmates, and more. Yes, some courts will side with the President. But blatant violations of constitutional law based on Trump’s whims won’t survive review.
The courts, as Klein points out, would have a harder time overturning an act of Congress. But Trump and his hapless crew lack the political ability to draft complicated new law or win legislative battles. “This is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy,” Klein explains. “He is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.” I added the emphasis because I love that line.
A few days after reading this piece, I noticed a weird story in The Guardian. The paper reported that numerous accounts of ICE activity from several years ago or more had been given current datelines by ICE and were therefore reposted as recent news. I can’t find any evidence of this phenomenon now, although my search was cursory. But I trust the Guardian and assume Google fixed the flaw.
“News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the U.S. over the past couple of weeks,” The Guardian wrote. “Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for ICE operations, raids, and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include “ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation,” “New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal non-citizens,” and, in Wisconsin, “ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens.”
But, the story went on, the Colorado operation was in November of 2010, the New Orleans arrests were a year ago, and Wisconsin’s roundup was in 2018. The Guardian found “thousands of examples of this throughout all 50 states–ICE press releases that have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago.”
Considering the many accurate stories of ICE activities, migrants being chained and giant military transport jets being used to fly them out of the country, why should we care about a few errant datelines? Because the lawyer who discovered the phenomenon and the reporters who chased it confirmed that no other government agency revised their archives and spat them out in this fashion; it was a deliberate attempt to fool the media. Another reason is that this whole story slipped under the radar, or drowned in the daily flood before it could swim, if you will. And that’s part of the same pattern identified by Ezra Klein. We are being played. And we can’t let it overwhelm us. Don’t believe the hype. Drill down.
Not Too Super Bowl
According to One Million Moms, some of their supporters are now avoiding NFL games due to the offensive commercials sprinkled through the telecast. Say what? Are these football fans who would happily watch if only the ads were family friendly? By implication, these “supporters” once watched the NFL but decided to abandon their rooting interests in view of the shocking promotions.
This year, the Moms alerted us before the Super Bowl, that not only would the half time show be “vulgar,” but “parents should be forewarned that ads can ruin family time once again.” Why? Because of the Hellmann’s mayonnaise commercial in which Meg Ryan reprises her classic orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally, this time thanks to the delicious Hellman’s spread.
There’s a reason this scene immediately became part of Hollywood lore. Every woman at some point in her life has done this. It’s not hard. You don’t need to be a great actress. You do it when you lack the maturity and the experience to just tell your partner that everything is fine, but it’s just not working for you at the moment. Also, from what I gather, men seem to believe it without question. The movie came out in 1989, in the midst of a shift in gender roles that continues to this day.
The Moms called the ad a “reenactment of an inappropriate deli scene from the movie … in which Ryan verbally implied an orgasm while simulating the emotions of a sex act.” The fact that this group reduces a piece of cinematic history to an “inappropriate deli scene” displays the superficial posturing that they pass off as a moral code. But they also have a tendency to get into graphic details for no reason that I can see. “Simulating the emotions of a sex act?” For a group that seems so sensitive to the slightest erotic nuance, they don’t censor their own press releases as one might expect. They even had a photo of Meg Ryan “enjoying her Hellmann’s” on the front of the notice!
Also, I must add that my wife has recently decided that we will be using Duke’s mayonnaise from now on. This is fine with me, I suppose. I can’t really tell the difference between Duke’s and Hellmann’s, the brand I used for years. But I feel a twinge of guilt for abandoning my hitherto seamless relationship with Hellmann’s so carelessly after such a long time.
And before we go, you heard the one about the last supper, right? Jesus pours the wine and says: “Drink of this wine, it is my blood.” He breaks the bread and passes it around. “Eat of this bread, it is my body.” He raises a bowl and asks the apostles, “Who wants mayonnaise?”
Courts To the Rescue, We Hope
Moving right along, let’s revisit our big GLBT Supreme Court case, U.S. v Skrmetti, which pits the United States Department of Justice against Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender minors. The case was appealed to the High Court after the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Volunteer State’s thumbs down on everything from puberty blockers to hormones was just fine.
Originally, the plaintiffs also included parents of transgender youths, but the Court only accepted review of the (Biden) Justice Department’s petition. While the parents argued that their constitutional right to determine their kids’ health care was violated, the government made a separate case that puberty blockers remained legal for non-trans kids who needed the drugs, but were banned for transgender kids—an Equal Protection no-no.
Fast forward to the Trump administration, when Bay Times legal experts have been wondering what the MAGA types will do to this case. On the one hand, they’re not going to take the trans-friendly Biden line. On the other hand, since the High Court seems poised to back Tennessee, the Trumpies probably don’t want the Court to simply drop the challenge. Sure enough, the new Justice Department recently informed the Court that the government’s position has changed, but at the same time urged the justices to proceed to a decision.
Normally, this case would demand our highest scrutiny, to borrow a legal term of art. But these days, it’s almost an afterthought. I’ve stopped reading all the details of the war on transgender men and women, but we’ve had a ban on military service reinstated by executive order, we’ve seen another order stating that Americans must stick with male or female from birth, and we’ve had an order banning trans women and girls from playing sports on female teams.
All these and others are stalled under court review, as are most if not all of Trump’s executive pronouncements. But the damage remains. The new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, just announced an end to new transgender recruits and new medical treatments. By implication, current service members can remain on duty and continue hormone treatments, but hell if I know what will actually happen. Hegseth’s policy seems to recognize that Trump’s ban on everything remotely transgender will not pass legal muster. But it leaves transgender men and women who are just trying to serve their country in limbo, and marks them as a pariah class. I assume it too will be examined by the courts.
Legal Eagle Behind Bars
Speaking of the Supreme Court, I have long followed “SCOTUS Blog,” the High Court website founded by Tom Goldstein and his wife Amy Howe to keep track of news and cases. In fact, the update on Skrmetti that I relied on for the previous section was written by Howe on SCOTUS Blog. Goldstein, in turn, has argued forty cases before the nine justices, making him one of the Court’s most familiar lawyers.
So, imagine my surprise when Goldstein was arrested for tax evasion after failing to declare millions of dollars in high stakes poker and other winnings. Goldstein reportedly bet like a madman, winning and losing vast amounts, borrowing more money, traveling the world, buying sports cars, chasing women, and, well, you name it. And there’s more! Just the other day, he was arrested again and charged with hiding two seven-figure bitcoin wallets and lying to the court. He was deemed a flight risk and will stay in jail until his trial. I’ve been trying to find out what Howe thinks of all this, but it’s difficult.
It’s as if my best friend’s good-natured Dad, who went to work at an insurance company every morning and helped coach the high school softball team, was suddenly exposed as a cat burglar having stolen hundreds of thousands in gold and jewelry. Tom Goldstein? Really?
Oh, he now claims to be destitute and will represent himself in court, so what happened to the millions of bitcoins? Whatever. I have little patience for this philandering egomaniac.
Anti-Trans Congresswomen Turns Truly Weird
And speaking of nutcases, thanks to my dear cousin (who also alerted me to Goldstein’s double life) I can report that South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace seems to have gone ballistic on the floor of the House, accusing her ex-fiancee and his buddies of a range of violent sexual assaults on women as well as a bunch of other crimes like taking photos up women’s skirts.
Mace first rose to my attention when she spoke at a prayer breakfast a couple of years ago, telling the churchy crowd that she had to avoid the sexual advances of her fiancée (same guy as mentioned above) in order to be on time for the event.
“When I woke up this morning at seven—I was getting picked up at 7:45—Patrick, my fiancée, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed,” she confided (to a public audience at a prayer breakfast!). “And I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning.’ I gotta get to the prayer breakfast, and I gotta be on time.” Mace then added: “A little TMI. He can wait. I’ll see him later tonight.”
Those bizarrely inappropriate comments, combined with Mace’s sexual poses and outfits, made me think of her as, um, a strange person with some deep insecurity or sexual quirks. Why the provocative demeanor and gratuitous confessions?
And, what’s going on with her mentally at this point? Yes, it could be true that Patrick Whoever has raped a dozen women and taken photographs of unconscious victims. But then again, why wait until now to report these discoveries (from Patrick’s phone) and why present the accusations in a speech to Congress rather than an affidavit to the police?
Of course, I will follow up!
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on February 13, 2025
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