Karl kramps up

Senator Vance appeared on the three network Sunday morning gabfests yesterday, including ABC’s This Week with Jon Karl. RealClearPolitics has posted video and transcript of the Vance segment here. Media Research Center has posted a clip of the interview focusing on Minnesota’s “trans refuge” law (below). The MRC clip is embedded in Jorge Bonilla’s story here. In substance, Senator Vance is an effective advocate of President Trump.

One can infer from the faces Karl makes and the tone of his voice that he disapproves of Trump. He looks to be suffering kramps as he frames his “questions.” What a kondescending kreep.

I wrote about the statute when it was enacted last year in “You don’t have to live like a refugee.” This may bear repetition as we are suffocated in the media miasma.

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Minnesota Democrats enacted a so-called “trans refuge” bill — H.F. 146 — on April 21, effective April 28. It represents a leading edge of the “let’s go crazy” campaign waged by Democrats now that they control the political branches of state government. Fox News covered the enactment of the bill here. Among other things, the bill protects the provision of “gender-affirming health care” to children in the state regardless of their state of citizenship.

As Minnesota native son Bob Dylan famously put it, “Come mothers and fathers / Throughout the land / And don’t criticize / What you can’t understand / Your sons and your daughters / Are beyond your command.” That’s the gist of the thing.

The Star Tribune has faithfully celebrated the Democrats’ “let’s go crazy” campaign in its multifarious manifestations including abortions and “gender-affirming health care.” See, for example, the April 21 Star Tribune story linked above at “let’s go crazy.”

What’s this “gender-affirming health care” all about? Truth in advertising would require the disclosure of “child mutilation” somewhere along the line.

Now comes the Star Tribune’s Jeremy Olson to carry on the Democrats’ public relations campaign for the “let’s go crazy” trans bill that has become the law of the state. Did the order come down from Star Tribune publisher Steve Grove, fresh from the Walz administration, for Olson to get on the case? Having followed Olson’s work during the era of Governor Walz’s one-man emergency rule, I think this kind of political teamwork comes naturally to Olson.

Olson describes himself as “a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering health care” who is “[t]rained in investigative and computer-assisted reporting[.]” No such background is evident in Olson’s 1,300-word story “‘It got very bad, very quickly’: Families with transgender kids seek refuge in Minnesota.” Subhead: “Advocates report more contact from families in other states that have banned or restricted gender-affirming care.” With a little help from “advocates,” Olson performs public relations on behalf of the Democrats’ handiwork.

What the heck is “gender-affirming care”? Olson explains:

Gender-affirming care includes counseling for dysphoria, a feeling of unease in someone whose gender identity differs from their biological sex at birth. Options include medications to suppress puberty and hormones for older teens to promote masculine or feminine features. Only about a half-percent of pediatric transgender patients pursue surgeries, mostly breast reductions.

So child mutilation represents only a half-percent of the cases and the chopping of juvenile male genitalia is “mostly” not part of “the package” (so to speak). Good to know.

Does he have a citation for that? (No.)

And precisely how many such cases are we talking about? (He doesn’t say.)

Given the seriousness of the potential for irreversible harm to minors, it is amazing that Olson has left his training in investigative and computer-assisted reporting behind here. Rather, he turns to the star of his story — mother/refugee Heather Crawford:

Crawford, who called herself a “political refugee,” said few people understand the needs of transgender children, making it an easy issue for politicians to exploit.

“If you tell someone who doesn’t know any better, ‘There are these crazy doctors who want to chop the body parts off of perfectly healthy children,’ your initial response to that is going to be, ‘Hell no, that’s wrong!'” she said. “The reality is that is not how gender-affirming care works.”

It is nevertheless “how it works” in at least a few cases according to Olson himself. Indeed, Olson’s featured case of Heather Crawford and daughter Cass is one! Olson lets on toward the end of his story: “[Heather] allowed Cass at 16 to pursue a surgery to reduce breast tissue, but step one is getting through the 13-month wait list for an initial visit to the Children’s clinic.”

Are readers paying attention? It’s almost funny.

My law school classmate Kevin Roche did not need training in investigative and computer-assisted reporting to refer me to this follow-up study of boys with gender-identity dysphoria. The study shows that a large majority in “follow-up data on the largest sample to date of boys clinic-referred for gender dysphoria” desisted (the term of art used in the study) by the median age of 20.58. It would be interesting to hear what “advocates” have to say about the study.