Whether she’s downplaying racism or flippantly pondering the possible date of President Joe Biden’s death, Nikki Haley seems to understand rote Reaganism won’t win the day among conservatives as it has in years past. So she’s upped the extremism.
The 2024 Republican presidential candidate has been lagging behind her biggest GOP primary competitors in polling for months and appears desperate to capture a news cycle. And, for Republicans, what better way to earn her one than numbskulled cruelty?
This is what viewers got Sunday during CNN’s town hall with Haley, in which she appeared to baselessly suggest transgender student-athletes are to blame for suicidal ideation among teen girls. She claimed that trans kids’ playing sports is “the women’s issue of our time.”
Seriously. She actually said that. The Supreme Court effectively stole bodily autonomy from millions of women last year by overturning the constitutional right to abortion and allowing states to ban abortion, including in cases of rape or incest. Along with that, Haley’s former boss and the current standard-bearer of her party, Donald Trump, was just found civilly liable for sexually assaulting and later defaming a woman. And recent reports allege widespread child sex abuse in some conservative-leaning religious groups.
But let Nikki Haley tell it, the bigger issue is whether a little trans girl should be allowed to play soccer with other girls?
The shame is twofold.
To make a cheap political point — insulting trans people — Haley tramples on truths about teen suicide and women’s sports. Put another way, trans kids’ playing sports isn’t the “women’s issue of our time,” as Haley claimed. In fact, it’s not even the most pressing women’s sports issue of our time.
First, there’s no evidence whatsoever showing that trans-inclusive policies — like allowing trans kids to use locker rooms assigned to the gender with which they identify — have any bearing on the rate at which…
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