Here’s another update about the current WV legislative session. So far, the legislature advanced bills to protect equal rights for women by erasing trans people from state documents (yes, it makes no sense), and to make it easier for kids to work. Oh, and soon the state may be able to arrest librarians on pornography charges.
The current legislative session ends on March 9, and Wednesday was Crossover Day, the day by which any legislation that needs to go to the other side of the statehouse should be sent on or be abandoned until the next session in January 2025. That is, unless a special session is called, which is now possible because the federal government has some questions about how the state spent covid-related money and wants WV to return $435 million, which means that the regular session will end without an actual state budget.
Republicans, man. Completely useless, even for the simplest things. Also it’ll be interesting to see if any wrong doing is found, and if that adds to Jim Justice’s legal woes as he runs for Joe Manchin’s Senate seat.
So here’s this week’s assault on decent people and nice things.
The legislative loves bullying trans kids, so this session there is a bill to make sure they lose the one avenue they currently have to gender-affirming care. Statehouse GOP leadership cheated by not making the bill public until the deadline had passed for the public to request a public hearing on it, and then substituted their own ignorance for facts during the debate:
Its lead sponsor, Del. Geoff Foster, R-Putnam, said in an interview he introduced this legislation because he believes gender-affirming care doesn’t help children experiencing gender dysphoria and he’s heard stories of children as young as four getting gender reassignment therapy and he wanted to close the exemption.
Last year, the Associated Press debunked claims like this as false, saying puberty blockers are generally available for children between the ages of 11 and 14, with hormone therapy starting at 14.
The one provision that escaped last year’s bullying of trans kids allowed doctors to help minors who were suicidal by allowing them access to puberty blockers and hormones. Now that’s gone, and WV GOP losers have really distinguished themselves with their comments:
When asked if he would change his mind if a teenager with gender dysphoria died by suicide as a result of not getting the care they needed, Foster said he wanted doctors to treat “the underlying condition.”
He likened treatment with hormones and puberty blockers to giving alcohol to an alcoholic, before equating the situation to schizophrenia.
This bullshit makes me FURIOUS.
Another group of people who got shafted by the legislature are unemployed people. Earlier this week, 2 of the state’s largest employers laid off hundreds of people. The current unemployment payments run for 26 weeks; in 2025 they will run for 12 weeks. If passed, this law will apply to the people who voted these assholes into the statehouse. I wonder if newly unemployed MAGA will make the connection. Oh, and if you 53-59 and you need food assistance benefits, you’re going to need to have a job. Good luck! This is what you voted for.
In education news, the legislature wants to force 8th graders to watch an anti-choice film produced by a group of anti-women wingnuts. The film itself is pure disinformation:
The video refers to a “heartbeat” at six weeks. At that point, the embryo isn’t yet a fetus and doesn’t have a heart. It also describes the animated figure’s motion and actions with words like “playing,” “exploring,” “sighing,” and making “speaking movements” — language critics have said assign human traits and properties to a fetus that are more sophisticated than medicine can prove.
Speaking during his chamber’s floor Tuesday, Republican Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo said he couldn’t support the bill because it contains “grossly inaccurate” information contradictory to science. A working pulmonologist, he had pushed for a change to the bill that would have required any video shown in school to be scientifically accurate. That effort failed.
“If we’re going to codify something that we’re going to teach, ‘this is fact,’ it needs to be fact,” he said.
Actual issues that are causing real problems in the state—assisting working people with childcare costs, oversight of the very corrupt state foster care system, addressing the state’s addiction problem—will not be addressed in this session.
One bill did make it into the pipeline, a WV version the CROWN Act which prohibits discrimination because of someone’s hairstyle, but it was killed by shunting it to the Finance Committee, where it was determined that that legislation would be too expensive for the state to defend. Mmmhmm. Indeed.
We’ll know next week which of these terrible things will become law. It’s so awful.
I’ll let Carole have the last word: