Rachel Levine

What possesses a great nation’s government to suddenly make transsexuality the center of its civil rights, education and juvenile health agenda? A recent White House proposal to adjust Title IX would make across-the-board school and college sports bans a civil rights violation. Sidestepping any conclusive ruling, the Supreme Court the same day allowed a twelve-year-old West Virginia transgender girl to continue competing on her middle school track and cross-country teams while legal battles work their way through lower courts. About two-thirds of Americans oppose transgendered athletics. Critics argue that they destroy women’s sports and mock Title IX’s original intent.

When we focus on the rise of the Hispanic male Republican, we overlook the emergence of his consort and counterpart, the right-wing Latina. Donald Trump made gains across the board with Hispanics in the 2020 election, but the media fixated on “multiracial whiteness” and “toxic masculinity” in the voting choices of Hispanic men. Meanwhile, Trump gained more votes between 2016 and 2020 among Hispanic women than any other sector of the electorate. The woke tell themselves that Hispanic men, with their supposed chauvinism and machismo, control the lives and voting choices of the Latina. But the opposite is the case. The Latina, with her preternatural seduction skills, holds the power in the relationship. If her curves sway to the right, the men, as they always do, will follow along.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health, will be sworn in as a four-star admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine will not only be the first openly transgender four-star officer in the uniformed services — according to the Biden administration, Levine will also be the "first female four-star admiral" of the health corps. Allow Cockburn to be the first to congratulate Ms Levine — sorry, Admiral Levine! — on this historic achievement. How inspiring that Rachel, formerly known as Richard, only had to identify as female for about 15 percent of her life before becoming one of the most successful women in the world.

It can now be said that Gov. Tom Wolf has driven reform in Pennsylvania — and no matter that it checks his own authority. That reform consists of amendments to the state constitution, approved last week by referendum and intended to halt the string of emergency orders that Wolf has issued since the start of the COVID epidemic. Although legislatures across the country have entertained a flurry of bills to curtail the reach of executive lockdowns, Pennsylvania is the only state to put such a stay on a governor to a popular vote. It isn’t as if Wolf has been the most arbitrary governor in the country, not in view of Cuomo in New York, Whitmer in Michigan and Newsom in California. The competition for that distinction is too stiff.

'Please tell me you’re Republicans,' President Ronald Reagan joked with his doctors as he headed into surgery after an assassination attempt against him in 1981. The joke worked in part because it was obviously absurd to think any doctor would alter their standard of care based on the politics of their patient. In 2020, can anyone be so sure? In the age of COVID, medical opinion has often become indistinguishable from politics. Laypeople cherrypick statements and studies that seem to confirm their biases, and when all else fails, glob on to anecdotal evidence from a friend, family member, or celebrity who got the virus. Sadly, too many doctors are no better.