ICYMI: Transgender care, losing farms, and more

Transgender Care

An in-depth summary of research and physician interviews focuses on medical care for transgender youth. That care is individualized, though it often includes hormone blockers at puberty. Surgery for youth is vanishingly rare. Medical care for transgender youth has been around for sixty years, involves teams of experts and months of mental health assessments, and is well-documented. Hormone blockers delay puberty. If hormone blockers are stopped, then puberty begins. While news coverage and propaganda often focus on people who have “detransitioned” or changed their minds about gender affirming care, the incidence of regret for such care is around one percent—far lower than the rate of regret for knee surgery (17.1 percent) or hip surgery (4.8 percent.)  

Losing Farms

The Guardian reports on the 2022 USDA agricultural census that shows continuing loss of farms, and increasing size of factory farms. Corporate factory farms also get most of the federal subsidies.

“Large farms – which includes mega operations with hundreds of thousands of acres – account for only 4% of the total number of farms, but control two-thirds of US agricultural land. The largest – with sales of $5m or more – accounted for fewer than 1% of all farms but 42% of all sales. …

“Government payments to farmers skyrocketed 17% since the last ag census to $10.4bn – thanks in large part to Covid era subsidies, which boosted income for some farmers to record levels between 2020 and 2022. But the number of farms receiving taxpayer subsidies fell dramatically by 25%, and it was the larger, wealthier – not struggling small farms – that benefited most. Farms with the highest sales (at least $50,000) received 64% of the total subsidies – despite accounting for only 11% of the beneficiaries. The smallest farms account for almost half (48%) of those that got some financial assistance, but only 4% of the total money.”

The Minnesota Reformer has the data showing that Minnesota is also losing farms and farmers to the consolidation and factory farm model.

Biden’s Age

A Trump-appointed lawyer who served in high positions in the Trump administration could not find any reason to prosecute President Biden for inadvertently retaining some classified papers—and then promptly returning them when his staff discovered he had done so. So the prosecutor issued a 300+ page report that included slurs about Biden’s age and forgetfulness. 

In “but Hillary’s emails” style, the major media trumpeted the ungrounded attack on Biden’s fitness. Instead of focusing on the substance of the report, newspapers that give Trump a free pass on his mental and physical (un)fitness, published a blizzard of articles highlighting the Hur attack on Biden–81 articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post in just four days. Judd Legum analyzes the coverage and contrasting (lack of) coverage of Trump in Popular Information. 

“On February 10, the New York Times explored the question of why voters seemed so much more worried about Biden than Trump, even though they are around the same age. …

“The article says the disparate treatment by voters reflects ‘profound differences… in how they are perceived by the American public.’ It does not mention that the perceptions of the two men by the public are shaped by media coverage.”

NATO Alliance

Trump’s rejection of NATO has nothing to do with paying dues: there are no NATO dues. His bombast and bluster inviting Russia to attack our allies is all about putting his allegiance to Putin above his allegiance to NATO—and above defense of the United States itself. 

Heather Cox Richardson has a good analysis: 

“National security specialist Tom Nichols of The Atlantic expressed starkly just what this means: ‘The leader of one of America’s two major political parties has just signaled to the Kremlin that if elected, he would not only refuse to defend Europe, but he would gladly support Vladimir Putin during World War III and even encourage him to do as he pleases to America’s allies.’ Former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark called Trump’s comments ‘treasonous.’”

Even staunch conservative Republicans cannot swallow this treason pill:

“Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) weighed in on the issue during debate [on the Ukraine aid bill]: ‘This is not a stalemate. This guy [Putin] is on life support… He will not survive if NATO gets stronger.’ If the bill does not pass, Tillis said, ‘You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble.’ For his part, Tillis wanted no part of that future: ‘I am not going to be on that page in history.’” 

Twitter/X and Misinformation

Social media accounts hold bi-weekly meetings to share information on fake accounts, and disinformation. Twitter/X stopped attending those meetings and leaves disinformation running rampant, including blue-check accounts that are actually AI or run by hostile governments. 

This Washington Post report details not only the Twitter/X slide into allowing disinformation, but also a court order that prevents the federal government from warning social media companies about disinformation campaigns, as well as tech companies’ reduction in staff assigned to monitoring mis- and disinformation.

“The result has been that accounts spreading disinformation that the other social media companies took down remain active on X. That allows the disinformation to be spread from there, including back to the other platforms.

“’Anyone trying to run a disinformation campaign is going to do it across multiple mainstream platforms,’ said Yael Eisenstat, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Cybersecurity for Democracy. ‘With foreign influence, we are less protected than we were in 2020.’

“The last X representative to attend one of the information sharing sessions was Ireland-based expert Aaron Rodericks, said the people familiar with the meetings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Rodericks was suspended from X after liking posts critical of Musk and is suing him and the company. Before that, Twitter’s representative was its safety chief, Yoel Roth, who resigned not long after Musk’s takeover and had to flee his home after Musk wrongly implied that he was soft on pedophiles. …

“Most troubling to some researchers, out of 123 accounts that Meta called out in May, August and December for participating in deceptive China-based campaigns, all but eight remain on X.”