Rep. Mary Peltola continues to have support among left-leaning American politicos, after emerging victorious in Alaska’s messy open-primary, ranked-choice general voting system in 2022.
Conservative Alaska voters, faced with a contentious field last year, awarded Peltola enough second-place votes to lock in her win.
As a candidate with low name recognition, Peltola committed to bipartisanship, saying she drew inspiration from the late Congressman Don Young. However, her voting record since November has revealed a different story.
Peltola’s support for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as House speaker, casting 15 votes in his favor, was the first big item that raised eyebrows around the 49th state.
She voted against the Strategic Production Response Act and justified her absence during the final vote by claiming she was unaware voting was about to occur.
Peltola voted against the censure of Rep. Adam Schiff, who was the unethical impeachment manager for Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the now-discredited “Russia collusion” attack on former President Donald Trump.
Recently, she joined most Democrats in opposing the National Defense Authorization Act. The rationale behind her “no” vote lies in her desire for culture-war earmarks to fund military transgender treatments and surgeries, as well as paying military women a month of leave for late-term abortions. Peltola has also supported transgender males’ participation in female athletic competitions.
She voted against H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights, and has been advocating for a national railroad strike, urging Starbucks baristas to unionize, and encouraging pizza workers in Alaska to do the same.
Peltola’s consistent absence is notable: She has missed 16 times more votes than the median Democrat House member. In a House with 435 members, she is number 12 for most missed votes.
While she participated in the women’s Congressional Softball game against journalists, she failed to show up for work the next day when almost all amendments to the National Defense Appropriations Act were voted on. Her inability to get out of bed deprives Alaskans of a voice in the House.
When she does vote, Peltola votes in line with Rep. Nancy Pelosi 84% of the time, Rep. Ilhan Omar 77%, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 78%. Keep in mind that 53 percent of Alaskans voted for Trump.
Nick Begich, a lifelong Republican who ran for Congress in 2022, has seen enough. He decided to run again after witnessing Peltola repeatedly vote against Alaska’s values.
Although he faces the challenge of overcoming his relatives, who include well-known Democrats, Begich enjoys the continued support of his followers.
But Alaska’s unique method of selecting representatives, introduced with Ballot Measure 2 in 2020, deviates from the rest of the nation. It’s a tangled mess.
The open primary format eliminated the Republican Party of Alaska’s ability to independently choose its candidate for the general election.
Instead, all candidates, whether clowns or statesmen, participate in the same primary ballot. In 2022, this resulted in a massive ballot with 48 candidates.
The top four vote getters from the primary advance to the general election, where voters are then asked to rank the candidates in order of preference. If a voter’s preferred candidate loses, their vote is transferred to their next choice, granting them an opportunity to vote again. In this scheme, some voters get to vote more than once, while others’ votes are counted just one time.
Given the array of choices Alaskan voters had in November, which included three conservatives and one liberal candidate selected in the primary, it remains perplexing how a radical like Peltola emerged victorious.
Supporters of ranked-choice voting had promised that the system would eliminate extremists, but this is not how it worked in real life. Alaskans ended up with a de facto member of The Squad.
Will it happen again?
Begich begins his campaign with a solid base of one quarter of the likely vote this time around. However, with less than a year remaining until the primary ballot is set in Alaska, a lot can happen with campaign hijinks, as we saw in 2022.
Last year, Begich garnered support from major conservative organizations like Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works for America, as well as the endorsement of the Alaska Republican Party.
And yet, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is not structured to work well with the ranked-choice voting system, which in a state like Alaska all but guarantees the presence of multiple Republicans on a general election ballot.
This time around, the NRCC can and should focus on highlighting Peltola’s extreme positions to ensure that Alaskans can make a more informed decision in the upcoming 2024 primary and general elections.
For now, Alaskans are represented by a bait-and-switcher who holds some of the most mind-boggling positions in the history of the U.S. Congress. Alaska has the distinction of being the most conservative district in the country to be represented by a Democrat. We can do better.
National organizations like the NRCC, Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and Club for Growth will be crucial in helping prevent a recurrence of 2022’s series of unfortunate events.
What does abortion have to do with the transgender movement? Nothing. But leftist activists are trying to convince us that abortion includes so-called “gender-affirming care.” Planned Parenthood and others have been pushing the message over social media and elsewhere in an effort to get people used to the idea. Why? One reason is that Planned Parenthood admits it is the second largest provider of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in the country. Read their own documentation here. And read these two reports that reveal the lucrative connection between the abortion giant and the transgender movement.
But it is also building their culture of death and destruction. I’m not saying they all see it that way, but pushing for abortion up to birth and the physical and psychological destruction of teens and even pre-teens in the name of “equality” is evil.
Polls show a large percentage of Americans do not support transitioning children with hormones or surgeries. So, leftists are hiding it in ballot measures and writing it into laws. In Ohio (potentially on the 2023 ballot) and Michigan (passed in 2022), the abortion ballot measures are so deceitfully written, it takes an attorney to figure out that both measures would allow abortion up to birth and include sex changes for children without parental consent. Read them here and here.
I will use italics below to indicate the language they use to underhandedly include sex changes, even for minors.
Ohio’s measure uses the term individual to covertly include children, and “reproductive decisions… not limited to … abortion” to covertly include sex-changes. If this was an abortion measure, it would just say that, and it wouldn’t include this kind of language that other states are defining as so-called “gender-affirming care” and courts will look to for direction.
Michigan’s constitutional amendment calls reproductive freedom a right and includes sterilization but is not limited to abortion. It, too, uses the term individual instead of woman or adult to ensure even children can get abortions or sex changes without parental consent.
Ohio’s and Michigan’s measures read a bit like Oregon’s proposed law and Colorado’s recently signed laws. Read here and here to see how the news media are using the Left’s language, and how the definition of reproductive freedom/decisions are being defined to include so-called “gender-affirming care.”
In very progressive states like New York, the abortion industry can get away with spelling it out in plain language, “… rights to an individual based on their ‘pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” It includes ethnicity, disability, age, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” The key words here say it all and will be used to set a standard for defining “reproductive healthcare/freedom” or “reproductive decision” throughout the country.
Maryland, same thing. The measure uses “reproductive freedom” instead of abortion, not just to make it sound better to voters, but so they can include sex changes. It calls “reproductive freedom” a fundamental right and says that right includes ending a pregnancy but is not limited to abortion. It goes on to ensure individuals (not just adults) have a right to reproductive liberty. So, although Maryland didn’t write it out as blatantly as New York, the language it did use allows the same thing: abortion to birth and sex changes, even for children.
Also, in states that are moderate or conservative, the abortion industry includes a limitation to abortion, but then takes it all back with near universal exemptions. More on that below.
So, when you see “reproductive healthcare/freedom/liberty,” “autonomy,” “reproductive decisions,” or “not limited to…” think sex-change drugs and surgeries. Because that’s how the courts will read it.
If the language uses “individual” or “person,” think no age limit; it includes children at any age for both abortion and sex changes.
If the abortion language sets a limit at viability or some other gestational age, check the exceptions! These ballot measures include exceptions for the “health of the mother.” Courts have interpreted that phrase to include emotional or mental health, and thereby allow abortions at any stage if the woman simply feels distressed. This has always been understood to mean no limits up to birth if the woman wants it, and the abortionist (self-servingly) signs off.
It’s there, but it takes a skilled attorney to connect the dots. The abortion industry knows most Americans do not support sex-change surgeries in state law, especially for children. And most Americans also do not support abortion up to birth. The industry knows these facts—that is exactly why they use crafty language to hide such extreme policies under vague wording and then redefine that language elsewhere.
One more thing: They will always cloak the measure in the nicest title:
“The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety”
“Equal Protection of Law Amendment”
“Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment”
Cathi Herrod is the president of Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a nonprofit advocacy organization committed to promoting and defending the foundational principles of life, marriage and family, and religious freedom.
Phoenix Children’s Hospital has now confirmed on a Twitter feed that their standard treatment for gender dysphoria is “gender-affirming care.” This is strictly bad news for Arizona’s troubled or gender-curious adolescents.
The wildly expanding world of transgender services has generated its own euphemisms, so a translation is in order. “Gender-affirming care” means that when any adolescent professes doubt or confusion about their gender, the only acceptable response is to agree that the child’s feelings are reality-based and immutable. Therefore, they must be encouraged to advance into treatment (more on that later).
Critics of this approach, even those simply urging caution, are ridiculed and threatened with professional sanctions.
Teenage females are the largest and fastest growing demographic for “transitioning.” Yet anyone who has raised, lived with, or been a teenage girl knows that they’re notoriously subject to mood swings and temporary infatuations.
Many adolescents today live in an Internet/social milieu that works to encourage transgenderism. Internet quizzes ask “Are you sure” you’re not trans.
Coming out as trans is seen as courageous. It is rewarded with admiration and respect. It can be seductive for teens with self-esteem issues and limited ability to foresee long-term consequences.
But the gender-affirming care model is unique in believing the feelings of a teenager alone justify life-altering medical and surgical treatments. There are no tests of any kind available to confirm or deny the diagnosis. According to this model, if the youngster reports they feel like the other sex, then they are transsexual. Period.
Gender dysphoria, feeling psychological discomfort with your biological sex, clearly exists. Some transgendered adults who made the considered decision to transform once maturity had been reached are living productive, satisfying lives.
Rare individuals who have been clearly gender dysphoric from birth seem to have a legitimate if ill-defined psychological disorder which can be ameliorated by passing as the opposite sex.
But these examples have no relation to the waves of transgendered teens now occurring. In her meticulously researched book “Irreversible Damage,” Abigail Shrier recounts interviewing hundreds of parents with essentially the same story.
They thought they were raising a bright, well-adjusted daughter with normal emotional riffs. Then, suddenly, supported by her authority figures, she comes out as “trans.”
By the time they realize what happened, the deed is done, often medications have been prescribed, and the parents are out of the decision-making loop. If they don’t fully cooperate, they can lose custody of their child.
The result of this approach has been a huge leap in the incidence of transsexualism. Until recently, about 0.3% of Americans identified as transgender. Among today’s youth, that number is 1.8% and climbing.
In 2007 there was one American “comprehensive pediatric gender clinic.” Now there are 60.
It’s not logically possible that an identifiable, biologically-based condition would undergo such an enormous increase spontaneously. Yet patients continue to pour in from school clinics and pediatricians’ offices.
But what about those treatments? Once on the track, younger patients (i.e., some grade schoolers) are given puberty blockers which delay the effects of sex hormones, essentially causing an arrested development.
Later in high school, patients are given the hormones of the opposite gender—most commonly testosterone for girls, followed by mastectomy and other surgeries to remove unwanted organs, implant facsimile organs, and produce desired cosmetic results.
These ministrations are depicted as benign and reversible, but they are neither. At a minimum, they permanently terminate key functions like fertility and breast-feeding. Complications of organ transplants like the phallus can produce grotesque results. The medical ethics of sacrificing a body function for aesthetic or psychological purposes is questionable at best.
The human toll of this departure from normal scientific standards of care is now coming into view. According to a 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health called “Suicidality Among Transgender Youth,” “56% of transgender youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidal thoughts.”
We are in the throes of an epidemic, not a viral but a social one. PCH and the other group-thinking experts serve us poorly by promoting this faddish, non-medical behavior. They should review the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Governor Doug Ducey may soon sign into law a ban on transgender surgeries for minors; the Arizona House passed a Senate bill to bar surgeries for minors to attempt a gender transition on Thursday. The bill, SB1138, passed along party lines.
AZ House just passed #SB1138 protecting children from experimental and irreversible gender related surgeries! the @votewarren sponsored bill heads to Gov’s desk pic.twitter.com/rLm5BYfGuj
Major opponents of the bill among the LGBTQ community include activists from Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national organization focused on pushing LGBTQ ideologies and activism onto children. One such activist also identified herself as a GLSEN lobbyist and community editor for several years, during which time she testified one of her daughters went through puberty and became withdrawn, depressed, and socially isolated. Young said that she encouraged her daughter to transition genders after no amount of therapy, support groups, or psychiatric medications alleviated her poor mental health. Even so, Young says her daughter doesn’t fully identify as male, but rather “male-leaning” on what they both consider the “spectrum” of gender.
Another activist — ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio, a transgender man known for her work defending transgender individuals, such as convicted spy Chelsea Manning — promised to mobilize efforts to convince Ducey to veto the legislation.
The legislation almost didn’t make it through initial consideration stages in the Senate. State Senator Tyler Pace (R-Mesa) wouldn’t back the bill at first during the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, arguing that parents should have the right to make medical decisions for their children. Pace later changed his mind, citing current international standards of care from health care experts on transgenderism. At present, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) doesn’t support gender transitioning surgeries for minors.
“There’s a certain threshold of irreversibility that can happen during a gender transition. We acknowledge as a state, and so does other very friendly transgender countries like Finland, like I brought up earlier, as well as the international organizations that say: when you get to this degree of irreversibility, it should not be made as a minor,” said Pace after changing his mind.
Just as with the House, the bill passed along party lines in the Senate.
No gender reassignment surgery under the age of 18 passed the Arizona Senate. On to the house. pic.twitter.com/g7TGnDYjYR
The Arizona Senate passed a bill banning gender reassignment surgeries for minors late last week after State Senator Tyler Pace (R-Mesa) switched his vote. Pace voted against the original version of the bill during the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. At the time, Pace argued that parents should have the right to make those medical decisions for their children.
Pace agreed to support the bill after he authored a strike-all amendment modifying it, which the committee approved. The amendment removed language prohibiting physicians or health care professionals from referring minors to health care professionals for gender transition procedures. It also removed language prohibiting government funds from going to entities, organizations, or individuals that provide gender transition procedures to minors.
When the committee reconsidered the bill as rewritten under Pace’s amendment, Pace cited the international standards of care of World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to justify his changed mind, noting that they don’t support transgender surgeries for minors. Pace clarified that physicians who implement gender reassignment surgeries on minors would be in violation of international best standards of care and subject to sanctions otherwise.
“There’s a certain threshold of irreversibility that can happen during a gender transition. We acknolwedge as a state, and so does other very friendly transgender countries like Finland, like I brought up earlier, as well as the international organizations that say: when you get to this degree of irreversibility, it should not be made as a minor,” said Pace.
There was disagreement in the committee between State Senators Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix) and Raquel Terán (D-Phoenix); Terán wanted to hear more public testimony, but Barto said that they heard almost 3 hours on the same subject the previous week.
The final Senate version of the bill removed the amendment stipulation that a minor must not have lived continuously in the gender role congruent with their gender identity for 12 months in order for the surgical prohibition to apply.
During the Senate floor vote, Democrats said the legislation opposed equality and attacked minors. State Senator Christine Marsh (D-Phoenix) said the bill was an “unnecessary,” masked effort to choose “buzz-words out of thin air” for the true objective of attacking children.
State Senator Rosanna Gabaldon (D-Sahuarita) claimed that transgender procedures merely prevented puberty. Gabaldon didn’t broach the subject of reported adverse effects of hormone blockers and therapies or gender reassignment surgeries.
With the amended language, the bill passed along party lines — no Republicans objected to it.
No gender reassignment surgery under the age of 18 passed the Arizona Senate. On to the house. pic.twitter.com/g7TGnDYjYR
