Following Up

We start with a picture of 70-year-old Dave Hughes, who entered an all-women poker tournament at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Florida and then won the $250 no-limit Texas Hold’em. There were 83 poker players in the tournament, and all of them were female except Dave, who was the last one to enter. Florida casinos are prohibited from disallowing a man to enter a women’s tournament by anti-discrimination laws.

Why is this story important? It’s really not, but it is a pretty good lead-in to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who we wrote about in our recent article Camelot Revisited. He is challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination for President in 2024. Within the past week, Kennedy said to CNN that biological males ”threaten the integrity of women’s athletics”….“I am against people participating in women’s sports who are biologically male…I think women who have worked too hard to develop women’s sports over the past 30 years. I watched it happen and I don’t think that’s fair.”

Kennedy’s opinion is diametrically opposite the view of the Biden Administration, which earlier this past month introduced a bill aimed to forbid schools and colleges across the county from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. Not surprisingly, Republicans agree with Kennedy - last week House Republicans passed a bill that would ban transgender female athletes from taking part in girls’ and women’s sports, by amending Title IX protections to only apply to biologically female athletes. Not a single Democrat supported the measure, though ten refused to cast votes.

In a somewhat related matter, Montana just became the latest state to ban or restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender children. Montana is one of at least 15 states with laws to ban such “care.” According to Montana’s Governor Gianforte, the bill "protects Montana children from permanent, life-altering medical procedures until they are adults, mature enough to make such serious decisions." President Biden strongly disagrees, and he claims that states have no right to restrict treatments like hormone blockers or sex change operations for transgender children, claiming that recent measures passed by Republican-led legislatures were based in “fear…“I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that. As a moral question or as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong,”

Are these cultural issues enough to sway the 2024 election either way? We’re not sure about that, but we suspect that most Moms and Dads will agree with the Republican point of view, as do we.

In national elections, Economics are usually much more important than Cultural issues. In our recent article, We’re Not Talking Peanuts, we focused on the upcoming debt ceiling crisis. Since we wrote, the Republican proposal to extend the debt ceiling and cap spending passed the House of Representatives in a narrow vote. In one respect, the Republican proposal is looking good. On April 25, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated that the Republican bill would raise the debt ceiling and save about $4.8 trillion over ten years. Now it’s up to the Senate to pass their own version of a bill. Then they must negotiate with the House, agree on a compromise, and then get the President to sign. That might be difficult. Heretofore, President Biden has refused to negotiate; but time is running out, and we think he’ll probably be forced to compromise and embrace at least some spending “cuts.” Stayed tuned.