This Week in Statehouse Action: April Showers edition

Red Rain: It’s somehow already been over a month since I did my first deep dive into the glut of state-level legislation targeting transgender kids this year, and—as you might have guessed, given the overall garbage trajectory of statehouse things this year—the news is worse now than it was then.

Campaign Action

This is literally the first time any of these lawmakers gave two shits about women’s sports

• As an erudite consumer of this missive, I surely don’t have to remind you that these bills have absolutely nothing to do with women’s athletics and everything to do with shaming transgender kids and telling them that they don’t belong.
• Another type of horrifyingly popular anti-transgender legislation making its way through legislatures this year: Bills banning doctors from administering hormone therapy, performing transition surgery, or providing other gender-affirming care to transgender youth.
  • Arkansas has already passed a bill banning transgender medical care into law.
  • But almost fittingly, the worst of these bills has surfaced in North Carolina, home of 2016’s infamous “bathroom bill.”
    Honestly the only good news here is that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper would certainly veto such a measure if it passed, and Republicans (… barely) lack the veto-proof majorities they’d need to override him.
    •  Senate Bill 514, introduced just this week, would
      • Ban all gender-affirming medical treatments through age 21 (most other bills of this nature set the age cap at 18).
      • Require employees of “any governmental entity,” including schools, to “immediately notify” a minor’s parents if the they have “exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex.”
      • Ban the use of state funds—including through insurance plans—for gender transition procedures for North Carolinians at any age.
  • Important reminder: There’s absolutely nothing “grassroots” or “organic” about this sudden glut of anti-transgender legislation across the country.

Blame It On The Rain: We’ve seen it for the duration of the Trump era: Journalism that fails to reflect the alternate reality in which you and your followers reside is “fake news,” according to many politicians and personalities on the far right.

This isn’t new; conservatives created and flogged the myth of the “liberal media” for many years until folks finally realized that it just wasn’t true.

But legislating in support of the “fake news” lie and “liberal media” myth is a rare sight, usually because of obvious First Amendment issues.

Well, thanks to some Republican lawmakers with dubious comprehension of the Constitution and conservative anti-LGBTQ activist and alleged stalker Chris Sevier, these rarely-spotted-in-the-wild bills have popped up in more than one legislature this year.

The “Stop Guilt by Accusation Act” has been introduced in Montana, Tennessee, and at least three other states, and it purports to stop media outlets from “acting as slander machines”

None have passed out of a legislature, but the Montana version, which narrowly failed this week, could be revived, and the Tennessee version is getting a subcommittee hearing next week.

November Rain: I’m going to take a quick break this week from talking about actual voter suppression legislation to zoom out a bit and talk about the forces that support the lawmakers who introduce and pass voter suppression legislation.

Or one force in particular, in this case: Facebook.

On Jan. 11, 2021, Facebook was one of several large tech companies that announced they would suspend political donations in the wake of the deadly Capitol riots on Jan. 6.

But just over a month later, Facebook quietly donated $50,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) via a Virginia-based subsidiary.

As an erudite consumer of this missive, you no doubt recall that the RSLC doesn’t just work to elect the GOP who introduced literally hundred of voter suppression bills across almost every state just this year; the RSLC is also behind the so-called “Commission on Election Integrity,” a group that convenes GOP legislative leaders to “share and discuss” so-called reforms designed to “restore the American people’s confidence in the integrity of their free and fair elections.”

… which is to say that the RSLC explicitly promulgated the Big Lie of a fraud-riddled and stolen 2020 election to promote its efforts to systematically enact new voter suppression laws across the country.

Just last week, Facebook’s VP and deputy general counsel for civil rights said (via a statement), “We support making voting as accessible and broad-based as possible and oppose efforts to make it harder for people to vote.”

Talk is cheap, and if Facebook is funneling money to the RSLC, this is just a straight-up lie. Facebook’s $50,000 contribution is supporting an organization actively working to make voting more difficult all across the country.

Other companies that have contributed at least $50,000 to the RSLC already this year include AT&T ($50,000), GlaxoSmithKline ($50,000) Eli Lilly ($100,000), and Astrazeneca ($150,000).