Free Republic

Self-described “progressives” appear to be tiring of Kamala Harris’s effort to downplay her left-wing policies, and are reminding her that they do not want to be taken for granted as she tries to portray herself as a “moderate” candidate. While Harris told CNN last month, in her first and only media interview, that “my values have not changed,” Harris’s campaign has been telling the media that she no longer supports some of her most radical policies, such as canceling private health insurance, defunding the police, ending detention for illegal migrants, backing the “Green New Deal,” banning fracking, and other policies...

LONDON (AP) — A High Court judge on Monday upheld the British government’s emergency ban on puberty blockers, saying a study that found “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits” of the treatment supported the restriction as potentially being harmful. Justice Beverley Lang said a review commissioned by England’s National Health Service concluded that gender care is an area of “remarkably weak evidence” and young people have been caught up in a “stormy social discourse.” The group TransActual and a youth who cannot be named under a court order sought to challenge the decision of former Health secretary Victoria Atkins...

CV NEWS FEED // Billionaire businessman Elon Musk emotionally described how he regrets giving his then-teenage son puberty blockers, adding that the boy was metaphorically “kiIIed by the woke mind virus.” Musk recently sat down with psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson for an interview that aired on DailyWire+ on Monday. “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs,” Musk told Peterson. “And so, I lost my son essentially,” Musk added after a pause. “They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead.” The businessman’s son, now legally...

Europeans Aren’t As Crazy As We AreOr, to be more specific, their left isn’t as crazy as our left. One instance among many is the United Kingdom’s relatively sane reaction to the “trans” hysteria that gripped the world’s leftists a few years ago. In America, “trans” ideology remains rampant, but in Europe it has been reined in. Thus, for instance, Britain has shut down its notorious Tavistock “child gender identity clinic.”In the last days of the Conservatives’ majority, they enacted an emergency ban on prescription of puberty blockers for children, the heart of the “trans” regime. In the wake of...

When the liberal Labour Party swept into power in the UK elections recently, conservatives were gritting their teeth and waiting for what was anticipated to be a dramatic lurch to the left in the country's policies. But one of the first initiatives they announced is diametrically opposite of that approach. The Tories had previously imposed a ban on administering puberty-blocking drugs like Lupron to children as part of gender-transitioning treatment, but that initial ban is set to expire in September. Rather than reversing it, the Labour Party is currently holding hearings with a goal of extending the ban or even...

Influential U.S. medical bodies are ignoring findings abroad that puberty-blockers and hormonal treatments for children and teens lack supporting evidence. On this side of the Atlantic, the Cass Review has fallen on deaf ears. Dr. Hilary Cass released her final report for England’s National Health Service two months ago, clearly demonstrating that puberty-blockers and hormonal treatments for trans-identified children and teens lack supporting evidence. NHS England has now banned puberty-blockers in clinical care and will be restricting their use to research settings. Yet U.S. medical leaders have responded with silence, inaction, or both, proving that the physical and emotional well-being...

Florida's blanket restrictions on medical care for transgender children were ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Tuesday, striking down a key pillar of Gov. Ron DeSantis' platform. In his ruling from Tallahassee, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle invalidated a Florida health code rule and a new state law that prohibited Medicaid payments for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. He found these bans violated federal laws, including the Affordable Care Act's prohibition on sex discrimination in healthcare. "Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate," Judge Hinkle wrote in his 105-page...

The “highly toxic agricultural chemical” is federally allowed to be used on oats and other grains imported to the US, according to the EWG. When applied to oat and grain crops, chlormequat alters a plant’s growth, preventing it from bending over and thus making it easier to harvest, per the EWG. Roundup for Breakfast, Part 2: In New Tests, Weed Killer Found in All Kids’ Cereals Sampled A second round of tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group found the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weed killer in every sample of popular oat-based cereal and other oat-based food marketed to...

The world is waking up to the horror that is 'gender-affirming care.' Of course, that term is one of the biggest lies ever told, but it becomes even more horrific when it is applied to children. This weekend, the French Senate joined the growing number of nations trying to ban the barbaric practice of sterilizing and mutilating children before they're even CLOSE to an age where they are capable of informed consent. To date, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Holland, and the UK have either banned or placed severe restrictions on trans surgeries and hormones for minors, along with 22 states in...

according to new research from the University of Utah. Males' upper bodies are built for more powerful punches than females', says the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology... For years, Carrier has been exploring the hypothesis that generations of interpersonal male-male aggression long in the past have shaped structures [as if there was no Designer] in human bodies to specialize for success in fighting... It's already known that males' upper bodies, on average, have 75% more muscle mass and 90% more strength than females'. But it's not known why. "The general approach to understanding why sexual dimorphism evolves,"...

A recent study by 11 scientists with the Mayo Clinic suggests that boys who take puberty-blocking drugs could be at risk of developing atrophied testicles and long-term infertility issues, despite claims that such drugs are reversible.The study, published in March and titled "Puberty Blocker and Aging Impact on Testicular Cell States and Function," analyzed testicular tissue samples from 87 patients under age 18.Sixteen of the boys identified as girls, and nine of them took puberty blockers. Two of the nine on puberty blockers "exhibited abnormalities" in their testicles, states the study hosted on the website of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory...

The publication this week of the Cass Review into gender-identity services for young people marks a welcome return to reason in an area of medicine which for the past few years has been driven by identity politics. No one is denying that there are those who deserve psychological — and in some cases physical — help to cope with their condition. But the explosion in the number of children treated on Britain’s National Health Service for gender-identity issues (and in many cases being given powerful drugs with severe side effects) should have set alarm bells. Medical professionals should have been...

The evidence for helping children to change gender including 'social transitioning' and hormone blockers is built on "shaky foundations", a major review into the practice by a leading field pediatrician in the United Kingdom has found. The long-anticipated Cass report into how the tax-funded NHShas been published and calls for major change, saying hormone drugs should no longer be given to under-18s and that the basis of ‘treatments’ given by the NHS have been based on practices with little “developmental rigour and transparency”. Fundamentally, Dr Hilary Cass said, “When conducting the review, I found that in gender medicine those pillars...

‘Gender-affirming care’ is starting to run up against reality and it is getting really ugly for the people who pushed sterilization and mutilation on children. Recently, after journalist Michael Shellenberger released ‘the WPATH files,’ the credibility of individuals and organizations who have embraced trans activism has been called into question, and for one very good reason: they have no credibility. Now, nations such as the UK and France are either banning these practices outright or considering bans as more evidence comes out that justifies the French Senate calling ‘gender-affirming care’ one of the greatest medical scandals in history. The latest...

England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced this week that children will no longer be given puberty blocker prescriptions after experts concluded that there were serious safety concerns. The NHS’ decision comes after it commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to review the published evidence on Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Analogues (GnRHa), also known as puberty blockers, which prevent the body from making sex hormones that are needed for an individual to growth and develop into a healthy adult.

England’s National Health Service banned the use of puberty blockers for children seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, citing limited research. Puberty blockers, or gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa), is a class of drugs that suppresses sex hormones in adolescents by continually stimulating the pituitary gland. It will now only be available to children in limited ways, such as clinical trials. The NHS’s website said, “Puberty blockers (gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues) are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness.” NHS England had previously ordered the London-based...

The AR-15-toting female who opened fire on worshippers at Lakewood Church in Houston on Sunday before she was killed by two off-duty law enforcement officers used a male name, making her one of several gender-confused shooters in recent years. After what Houston Police Department Homicide Division Commander Chris Hassig called a rigorous investigation “talking with individuals” conducting “interviews” and scanning “documents,” the department confirmed that 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno is a Hispanic woman who sometimes masqueraded as “Jeffrey Escalante.” It's still unclear exactly why Moreno, who had a long rap sheet and, according to Moreno’s anti-Second Amendment mother-in-law, a history...

Ultimately, they want to take down red America – duh. This thread from Nate Hochman is very long, very disturbing, and a total must-read. Yeah, we know, the words ‘MUST-READ-thread’ can sound sorta clickbaity but this time around, it’s just us being honest. It’s easy to take a red state for granted because in a red state you can typically make some general assumptions, especially a red state like South Dakota. Except folks, that’s not always the case. Grab a snack, get comfy, and take a gander at this: A powerful, well-funded coalition is working to bring the transgender movement...

Centred on the University of Lille, France, in September 2022, a group of international researchers reported in the prestigious journal Science that the progressive devolution in mental abilities of people suffering from Down Syndrome (DS) could be attributed to an associated reduction in the production of a particular hormone. They based their assertion on the results of experiments they had performed on genetically engineered mouse models of DS and on a small group of adult human sufferers of DS, in all of which the levels of the hormone had been restored to normal by various experimental means.[1] The researchers report...

'I think when we just say, "Oh puberty blockers are just reversible and it’s a very noninvasive treatment," I would say it’s more invasive than oftentimes the media makes it out to be or other people', one pediatrician said. (LifeSiteNews) — Top American pediatricians acknowledged major concerns connected to transgender drugs for children in resurfaced videos from 2022, The Daily Caller reported in an exclusive article published Tuesday. During a 2022 conference for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets the standards for transgender “care,” including age ranges for certain treatments like puberty blockers, double mastectomies, and...