To be replaced by the Mike Pence reparative therapy seminar at the Enola Gay.
Drug-resistant STIs are on the rise, trans suicides and homicides are still wildly out of proportion with the rest of the population, and on a brighter note HIV/AIDS can be reduced tremendously by funding PrEP access for vulnerable populations. Stuff like this has massive returns on investment, but we’ve got “Christians” at the top, so nooooo.
" The intention was to plan a 5-year agenda.”
Stalin had five year plans, you know.
I guess the new administration just wants to prevent the CDC from forcing everyone to be L,G,B, or T…or something. Truth be told, most of what’s coming from this new administration seems pretty half baked and not particularly well thought out.
I’d like to say I’m surprised by this but…
Getting a small taste of what it must have been like to have lived in the Dark Ages.
I think there was a necessary something for the triumph of evil but I can’t remember what it was.
This is really chilling. It’s almost as if Republicans have decided there is no longer any need…as if Trump intends to let them die in concentration camps? Could Mad Dog be putting together plans for federal troops to round up people faster than even Goering and Himmler did for Hitler?
I’m not being snarky here. Trump is talking like he’s a dictator and the Congressional Republicans go along with whatever he wants.
There are no good men left in the Republican Party. Treason and cowardliness reigns supreme.
Small???
This won’t be a concern once Trump’s ban on terrorist supporting countries sending their LGBT youth to America goes into effect.
GOP: This anti-Christian behavior is against our constitution. Obama flaunted it. These people should just go away.
Trump: TrumpCare will include free conversion therapy under Dr Pence’s guidance.
The worst part of this is that appears to involve self-censorship, not a dictum from the incoming Trump administration to stop it. The CDC made this decision on their own in the days following the election because they were afraid of political fallout. not because anyone ordered them to do it.
It would have been much better had they moved forward with their plans, and forced the incoming administration to shut them down, inviting public reaction. Instead the CDC was so afraid of their own shadow that they voluntarily backed down, letting Trump/ Pence/ Price off the hook.
We used to see this in HIV/AIDS policy during both Bush presidency and, sadly, even the Clinton years - the CDC staffers would refuse to pursue valid public health activities because they were afraid of the reaction from higher up, so they gave up even trying to do anything more than nibble around the edges of effective actions.
I know lots of folks working at the CDC, and they are good people who are committed to public health and protecting the well-being of all citizens. But all too often, the inertia of the bureaucracy and the mere fear of political interference prevents them from doing the right thing.
Far better to push the envelope and see how far you can get than to cower in the corner hoping no one notices you.
(BTW - I’m all for this summit, but think it is pretty tone deaf that they were asking HRC to be a lead sponsor. HRC is an explicitly political/ electoral organization, and it seems as inappropriate to have them as a sponsor as it would be for the Trump administration to invite the NRA or an anti-choice PAC to sponsor a public health conference. There are plenty of excellent non-profit service and advocacy groups focused on youth issues, LGBTQI health, HIV/AIDS, homelessness, etc to bring in - the fact that they don’t have the political clout or fundraising heft of the Human Rights Campaign doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be the ones in leadership roles instead.)
Frankly I don’t know how many more of these “future that might have been” articles I can take. We have now inherited the shitstorm and simply need to confront that. Everything else is just needless crying into cold coffee.
Rise up and resist - everyday until we defeat this.
I agree with the spirit of your post, however I don’t agree that “pushing the envelope” would be strategically wise given the current political climate.
The possibility of extremists maximising the opportunity to shine a light on their own agenda straight after the election and empowering bigoted groups would have been a genuine possible outcome.
That said, I’m not in praise of them pre-empting any decisions, however sage they may be.
It’s instructive to recall that that the beginning of the GW Bush administration, the Division of Adolescent & School Health was forced to remove a website that described effective HIV prevention interventions for adolescents and had its budget slashed. Only recently has DASH, as its known begun to recover. CDC was heavily micromanaged in the Bush years with its foreign placements micromanaged by the Presidential appointee who was running PEPFAR. For most of those years, CDC was run by someone who rose to the top rather accidentally, was not really a public health person and ran the place with a bunker mentality, adding a new layer of bureaucracy and making little effort to backup the rank and file. It took a long time. It’s disturbing to see self-censorship, but CDC became a demoralized place that lost its next generation of leadership to academia and other federal agencies because of what happened in the last GOP administration and more recently, they have spent years fighting back Congressional attempts to decimate the childhood vaccine program. So, yeah this is pretty craven but it it’s more than just empty fear that’s driving it.
So why is Trump shunning a Kim Davis Cabinet appointment?
A Sarah Huckabee Sanders failure?
People are saying it’s because all three share muumuu and kaftan sizes…
I agree. This is what new administrations do. There was just as much anger on the right when the Obama Administration reversed Bush’s policies at the Department level. If you’re at a stage in your life where you want to be angry about politics, go for it. If not, you’re just wasting emotional energy, which I, personally, need to conserve for other negatives things in my life… Yes, I’m kicking myself for reading this one.
An aside. When I read the Wall Street Journal, I often learn more from the comments that I do from the article. The down side was that for years there were three or four obsessively angry men, who would comment on an article about Washington state wines with a blistering attack on Hillary (and occasionally Bill) Clinton. I wonder what those people are doing now. There has to be some psychological impact to having an angry obsession taken away.
I think it’s important to note that this seems to be self-censorship by CDC management, not an action of the Trumpery Transition. Whether is was a wise decision is something else. In my office, high level executive said–on video tape–to “keep your head down”.
I work for a federal agency, the National Park Service. I have worked in many different locations. Sometimes management is effective. Many times management, starting at the top, is clueless and does not remotely have as a priority the running their park or parks in any kind of effective way or in fact have any concept of effective management in the first place, but only in looking good to those higher up in DC (not being good, looking good) and very often in rewarding those in their personal favor for personal and racial and religious reasons.
So I’m not surprised by any craven two faced moves by management of any federal agency.