MomLinks: Grift Shopping

Oklahoma's schools stand to spend millions on "Trump Bibles." A conservative PA school board spends $9,000 to cut an observation window in the gender-neutral bathroom. That and more, in MomLinks.

Happy Friday, moms and honorary moms. Fall is in the air. Leaves are on the ground. School boards are back in session and goddamn are they already producing some bangers.

In the spirit of catching up on reading (October always gives me the nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten a homework assignment), here’s what I’ve been studying from a very busy week in the parentsphere:

-Did you watch the vice-presidential debate? I’m so sorry. The Tuesday night faceoff saw Republican candidate JD Vance deliver a yassified (but materially unchanged) version of Donald Trump’s campaign stump. That meant lying about some of the campaign’s most unpopular stances, especially about reproductive rights. While attempting to portray himself as a compassionate moderate on abortion, Vance claimed to have never supported an abortion ban. This, Vanity Fair notes, is an outright lie.

Per VF: “In 2022, while running for Senate in Ohio, Vance said on a podcast, ‘I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.’ During that same campaign, he stated on his website for all the world to see that he was ‘100 percent pro-life’ and that he was in favor of ‘eliminating abortion.’ In fact, those words were on Vance’s website until July of this year, when Trump announced the senator as his running mate.”

Instead of outright promoting abortion bans on the debate stage, Vance used weasel words like “minimum national standards” for abortion access. As Abortion, Every Day author Jessica Valenti has previously written, the post-Roe anti-choice lobby has increasingly disguised unpopular abortion bans with euphemisms about “limits” and “minimums.” Of course, as Valenti writes in her debate fact-check, a 15-week “limit” on abortions is identical to the type of 15-week national ban suggested by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Such a ban would be devastating to women’s freedom and women’s health; though abortions after 15 weeks are relatively rare, common reasons for obtaining them include medical risks to women’s lives.

Throughout the debate, Vance took a patronizing approach to people who wish to terminate pregnancies. When describing a friend who obtained an abortion because she was in an abusive relationship and a child “would have destroyed her life,” Vance spoke in bland terms about Republicans earning women’s trust and making it easier for them to have babies. He pulled the same rhetoric when describing people who obtain abortions because they cannot afford children. But no amount of feigned compassion—condescension, really—will change the fact that Vance’s policies would have trapped his friend in an abusive relationship, and would trap poor women in poverty. People who obtain abortions are not misguided. They, better than any candidate, know what’s best for their bodies and their futures.

-But the GOP knows it has an abortion messaging problem. A leaked excerpt of Melania Trump’s forthcoming memoir shows the former first lady defending abortion rights. 

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” reads the excerpt. Melania goes on to argue that “[r]estricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Exactly, lady whose husband has been instrumental in dismantling reproductive choice. At the Guardian, Moira Donegan gives Melania’s comments a well deserved side-eye.

Donegan writes: “It could well be that these statements from Melania Trump are sincere. But that does not mean that her choice to make them now, at a moment when they are maximally politically beneficial to her husband, is not cynical. The Trump campaign, after all, has been frantically trying to project an image of moderation and reasonableness on abortion rights over the past few weeks, responding both to the overwhelming voter support for the issue in elections held since the Dobbs decision, and to a changed race in which their new Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, is dramatically more comfortable and effective at campaigning on abortion rights than her incumbent predecessor, Joe Biden.”

Want proof that this is conveniently timed messaging? Donald Trump gave his wife’s book a positive blurb.

-As with Israel’s attacks on Gaza, children are among the victims of new Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon. More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed by the Israeli campaign, and more than a million people have fled their homes. Survivors in Lebanon told New York Magazine of the ongoing campaign’s devastation of entire families. Alaa, a 26-year-old accountant living in an epicenter of bombing told New York:

“On the first day of Israel’s bombings, my cousins were killed. I will never forget the sound of the explosion. My uncle’s wife, their daughter, and my cousin’s wife and her three children were all martyred. They had gone to pick up some clothing before evacuating. They were at the door when the bomb hit. My uncle passed away long ago and my cousin works abroad. The bomb only killed women and children. The house was flattened. Only rubble was left. They were shredded so badly that civil defense found only body parts. They put them in a plastic bag together in a single grave. The same day, another shell hit our neighbors’ house. The entire family was wiped out. That was the most difficult day of my life.”

Israel’s strikes on Gaza—and recently, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen—continue amid an outright refusal by U.S. politicians to halt or even place conditions on aid and arms sales to Israel. And despite public comments about working toward a ceasefire, President Joe Biden reportedly told allies last week that he did not believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a ceasefire with Hezbollah, Israel’s stated target in Lebanon. (Netanyahu recently rejected one such ceasefire proposal.) 

New reporting from ProPublica on Friday reveals that State Department officials have internally argued to limit or entirely cut off weapons sales to Israel over the past year, citing the use of American bombs in civilian massacres. Last week, ProPublica reported that two leading U.S. agencies on humanitarian aid concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked food and medicine from entering Gaza. Those agencies recommended the U.S. halt weapons sales to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected those findings.

-Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is at it again in his apparent crusade to dismantle his state’s secular public education system. In June, Walters ordered that in grades 5-12, “every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.” The mandate sparked pushback from civil rights groups, as well as from Oklahoma school districts that said they will not alter their lesson plans to shoehorn in bible studies.

Last week, Walters requested $3 million in public funds to purchase bibles. Walters said those funds would join another $3 million that his department had earmarked for bibles. “This would give us the ability to utilize $6 million in less than two years to ensure that the Bible hasn’t been driven out of Oklahoma classrooms, and would be a significant step for the State of Oklahoma to ensure that we’re not allowing the left to censor American history,” Walters said last week.

Okay, a couple problems here: the $3 million that Walters claims to already have is complete AWOL. It’s not listed in any appropriation or budget request, leading Oklahomans to formally inquire what the hell Walters is talking about. On Thursday, four civil rights groups filed a joint open records request to determine the source of the education department’s extra millions, especially when many schools in the state are under-resourced.

Then there’s the matter of where those millions are going. On Monday, Walters opened the bidding process for vendors who might supply the state with 55,000 bibles. The bid documents included some oddly specific criteria. According to a new report from the Oklahoman:

“[V]endors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

“A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. 

“But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.”

That’s one way for a status-hungry state politician to climb the national GOP ladder.

-Speaking of misuse of public school funds, let’s check in with one of Pennsylvania’s more notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ school board leaderships. York County’s South Western School District has cut a massive window into its gender-neutral bathroom so that people can watch students inside. Seriously, look at this thing.

The South Western School District, which saw far-right school board members win a low-turnout election, consulted with a conservative Christian law group in deciding to cut windows into the gender-neutral bathroom (and only the gender-neutral bathroom). The board approved $8,700 for the project.

Bathrooms aren’t just for toilets. As anyone who’s attended school—or hell, even worked in an open-plan office—knows, a bathroom trip can be a brief, merciful moment to one’s self. School children feel relentlessly perceived, perhaps more so today amid new security theater measures. They might enter metal detectors on their way into school, face strict regulations about backpacks or be made to carry clear bags. Their school might be one of the growing number to use AI security cameras in a technologically dubious attempt to stop school shootings. Sometimes you want two seconds of solitude. Sometimes you want to vent to a friend in relative private. Sometimes you genuinely do just want to piss but you don’t want people watching feet under stalls.

Ideally, kids could use bathrooms that correspond to their gender. The half-measure of “gender-identity” bathrooms (which have sprung up in several politically contentious Pennsylvania districts) has added a confusing calculation to what should be an untroubled bodily function. But cutting a window into a “gender-identity” bathroom is a bold message to the kids who need it. It tells them they are not trusted. It tells them they are aberrant. It tells them they are being surveilled.

-Anti-trans policies are a danger to kids’ lives. A new study in Nature found significant increases in suicide attempts by young transgender and non-binary people in states that have passed anti-transl legislation. In The Present Age, Parker Molloy breaks down the findings:

“The findings are nothing short of alarming. For trans and non-binary youth aged 13–17, there was a 7–72% increase in past-year suicide attempts in states that enacted anti-transgender laws relative to states that did not. For the broader age group of 13–24, the increase was 38–44%. These aren't just statistics; they're real lives being affected by legislation that targets some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

“The study found ‘minimal evidence of an anticipatory effect in the time periods leading up to the enactment of the laws.’ In plain English, this means that the harm isn't just coming from the debates or the introduction of these bills—it's the actual enactment that's causing the spike in suicide attempts. The laws are the problem.

-In the Washington Post, Casey Parks delivers a difficult portrait of one transgender youth caught up in Florida’s anti-trans crackdown. Elizabeth, a 16-year-old transgender girl who was class president and homecoming princess, saw her life upended when a conservative school board member reported her for playing volleyball. (MomLeft readers might remember this school board member, Daniel Foganholi, who participated in Moms for Liberty events and, when he lost his most recent election this summer, was appointed within days to a state-level education position by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.)

-I hope you make time for this new excerpt of journalist Talia Lavin’s forthcoming book Wild Faith, in which she investigates the Evangelical fixation on corporal punishment of children, and how that doctrine of supreme parental authority has dovetailed into today’s “parental rights” movement.