Trump rape lawsuit trial begins today – National & International News – TUE 25Apr2023

Trump rape lawsuit trial begins today.

Missouri to severely restrict gender-affirming care for minors and adults.

Sudan: UK evacuates citizens amid uneasy truce

NATIONAL NEWS

Trump rape lawsuit trial begins today

A lawsuit that against former President Donald Trump will begin in New York City today. The first day will be jury selection and possibly opening arguments. The suit has been brought by E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of an upscale Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

Trump will not be attending the trial after a request from his attorney claiming that Trump didn’t want to burden the city with security arrangements for his visits. The jury will not hear this excuse, per the judge’s order.

This trial has been a few years in the making. Carroll published a memoir in 2019   in which she details her encounter with Trump. Trump, who was then President, denied the accusation and Carroll then launched a defamation lawsuit.

Trump has also repeatedly said that Carroll was “not my type”. It’s therefore notable that when Trump was shown a picture of Carroll from a few years before the assault, Trump mistook Carroll for his second ex-wife Marla Maples.

The defamation suit has now moved to the backburner when New York passed the Adult Survivors Act last year. The law opened a one-year window during which sexual assault survivors could sue their perpetrators for assaults that are beyond the statute of limitations.

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Missouri to severely restrict gender-affirming care for minors and adults

Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey has recently taken up the cause of denying gender-affirming care to as many transgender people in his state as possible. Bailey’s office issued an “emergency directive”, which goes into effect Thursday, imposing new medically-unnecessary restrictions on who qualifies to receive gender-affirming healthcare.

Among other things, the emergency rule (which you can read here) bars healthcare providers from administering gender-affirming care to any patient, including adults, unless:

• The patient has the patient “has exhibited a medically documented, long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria” for the last three years.
• The patient has been screened for autism.
• The patient has had at least 15 hours of talk therapy over the past 18 months “to explore the developmental influences
  on the patient’s current gender identity and to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities”.
• Any other mental health concerns the patient experiences have already been treated or resolved.

For minors specifically:

• Patients must be screened for social media addiction and hasn’t suffered from it in the past 6 months.
• Authorization must be obtained quarterly from any parent or guardian with the right to consent to medical interventions for the child. So even if a non-custodial parent refuses to consent, the treatment will cease.

Bailey defended the order saying that the rules would not interrupt treatment already in progress. However, the order clearly states that continuing the treatments will only be lawful “so long as the person or health organization promptly seeks to initiate the treatments and assessments” listed above. The implication is that should they fail to comply, healthcare providers will be subject to prosecution.

Challenges filed

Advocacy groups have filed suit to halt implementation of the order, arguing that the order exceeds Bailey’s authority. By targeting adults as well as children, critics say Bailey’s order goes beyond the pretense adopted by other states of “protecting children” from life-altering procedures. This order, advocates say, amounts to an attempt to “erase” transgender people. 

In the order, Bailey cites several studies, which his critics described as “flawed”, claiming that gender-affirming care is harmful or does not relieve instances of suicidal ideation among adults and teens experiencing gender dysphoria. There are plenty of studies that have reached the exact opposite conclusion.

What Bailey’s order does in essence is nullify the right of patients, parents and providers to examine the evidence for themselves and make an informed decision based on their, their child’s, or their patient’s situation as to what care is necessary and in the patient’s best interest.

So far as anyone has been able to find out, Bailey is not a doctor. 

Some perspective

In recent months and years, Republican leaders and legislators have put an extraordinary amount of energy into passing laws targeting transgender people by diminishing their rights to make their own medical choices and their rights to self-identify and present themselves as they wish. So it may be surprising to learn that less than half of one percent (<0.5%) of Americans identify as transgender. To put that in perspective, according to the most recent available data:

• 1.5% of American adults have been displaced by a natural disaster in the past year (as of Apr. 2023).
• 3.5% of Americans are unemployed (as of Mar. 2023).
• 10.9% of American adults recently experienced food insecurity (as of Apr. 2023).
• 11% of Americans under 65 had no health insurance (as of Aug. 2021).
• 16.9% of American children live in poverty (as of 2021).
• 19% of American adults has lost a family member to a gun-related death (as of Apr. 2023).
• 31.4% of Americans fear eviction or foreclosure in the next two months (as of Apr. 2023)
• 38.7% of American adults struggle to meet basic household expenses (as of Apr. 2023).

One may wonder what Republican leaders could accomplish if they addressed the real threats to the material and spiritual well-being of millions of Americans with the same zeal they have put into demonizing 0.5% of the population and shutting down drag shows.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Sudan: UK evacuates citizens amid uneasy truce

For the first time in the 10 days since Sudan’s rival militias started a civil war, the two sides have agreed a ceasefire, and it’s holding. This is only the latest of several unsuccessful attempts to broker a truce. On Friday, US forces undertook a risky operation to extract diplomats and their families from the war zone. Other countries have mounted similar operations both before and since. But until today, no Western country had attempted a full-scale evacuation.

Now the UK is making repeated landings and take-offs at a German airfield and is attempting to get as many Britons out as they can while the truce holds. The British government estimates it has more than 2000 citizens in Sudan.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was instrumental in negotiating the 72-hour ceasefire. However, despite the success of Friday’s daring rescue of embassy personnel, the US hasn’t announced any plans for a wider evacuation of its citizens. Such an undertaking would be considerably more demanding as there are around 16,000 US citizens in Sudan.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, told NPR she was hopeful that this ceasefire would lead to a more durable resolution. Under those conditions, an evacuation of any US citizens who want to leave would be more feasible. Thomas-Greenfield was unsure how many American citizens wished to leave Sudan.

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