TWIT Awards – March 9, 2025
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Aa we mentioned in the news, President Trump, in an address to a joint session of Congress, talked of cutting eight million dollars that was spent on “making mice transgender.” When journalists pressed the White House for an explanation, they got several, none of which were all that good. perhaps the best was that he was referring to studies on the safety and effectiveness of hormone therapy on humans, although most of those studies look at the use of cisgender hormones, not transgender hormones. Many people assume that he was referring to transgenic mice, which have a more nearly human DNA, to study the effects of various medicines on humans. For creating a very unclear image of what is studies he is halting, for leaving his underlings to guess at what he was referring to, and for apparently cutting a worthwhile program in the name of cutting waste, and for not caring how many people (including cisgender people) are impacted by the cut, President Donald Trump gets a TWIT. Rolling Stone has this story.
The Pentagon had said that they have a waiver for transgender people who are currently serving in the military. As long as they can meet some threshold, they can remain in the military. This was a sticking point in the previous attempt at banning transgender people from military service: there needs to be some accommodation for people who relied on the continuance of a previously-proclaimed policy. According to The Advocate, those waivers require the service member to stop receiving gender-affirming care and to revert to the gender assigned at birth, or close enough to that. For flat-out lying, and for failing to meet the low bar which was previously established, President Trump’s hand-picked apparatchiks at the Pentagon get a TWIT.
President Trump’s people in the Department of Defense were also taken to task for telling a judge that they do not know how many transgender people there are in the military, or why they are barring transgender people from serving in the military. For implementing a policy for no good reason, for failing to discuss the reasons for the ban, and for not caring how many people doing what particular jobs would be let go under the policy, the Trump administration, especially their people in the administration of the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense get a TWIT. The Advocate has this story.
In the news, we also mentioned a bill by Texas state Representative Tom Oliverson which, if passed and signed into law, would make a transgender person presenting in the gender with which they identify an example of felony fraud. For escalating the dangers for transgender people, and for wasting the time of the legislature on further punishing a group of people who are already quite punished in Texas, state Representative Tom Oliverson gets a TWIT. This story comes from CBS 19 News.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent a memo to hospitals, telling them that if they ignore President Trump’s executive order banning gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 nationwide, they may lose their Medicaid and Medicare funding. For ignoring a court order preventing the enforcement of that executive order, and for pretending that the president can unilaterally decide which bills to pay and which not to pay, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gets a TWIT. Erin In The Morning has this story.
The online publication World claims it contains, “Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth.” They mention a study from Baylor University, which was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. They say that the study shows that “[t]ransgender Americans who undergo surgical interventions are more likely to experience depression anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse than those who do not.” While this statement is true, it gets the cause backwards. Gender-confirming surgery does not cause depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation, but rather, these mental health issues are signs of gender dysphoria, which is relieved by gender-affirming care. For confusing the cause with the effect, World gets a TWIT.
In carrying out President Trump’s wish to remove all material which promotes diversity, equity, or inclusion from government web sites, the military is removing pictures of the aircraft which dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. The reason for removing photos of the bomber is that the plane was named the “Enola Gay,” which appears to have been noticed by some kind of search for the word “gay.” For acting without concern for what exactly it is doing, the military archivists get a TWIT. This story comes from Them.
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Category: Transgender Opinion
