remember guise, don't call them fascists: HOUSTON — Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: Compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years. “Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.” After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told The Post in response to questions. “A verbal request was received,” he wrote in an email. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.” Asked who in Paxton’s office had requested the records, he replied: “I cannot say.” The behind-the-scenes effort by Paxton’s office to obtain data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their license came as the attorney general, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders in the state have been publicly marshaling resources against transgender Texans. In October 2021, Abbott signed a bill banning transgender youths from participating in sports that align with their gender identity at K-12 public schools; this year he ordered the state to investigate the provision of gender-affirming care as potential child abuse. State lawmakers have already proposed more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ measures ahead of the next session in January, including criminalizing gender-affirming care and banning minors at drag shows. Public records obtained by The Post do not indicate why the attorney general’s office sought the driver’s license information. But advocates for transgender Texans say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling it a chilling effort to secretly harness personal information to persecute already vulnerable people. “This is another brick building toward targeting these individuals,” said Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney who represents Texas parents of transgender children investigated by the state. “They’ve already targeted children and parents. The next step would be targeting adults. And what better way than seeing what adults had had their sex changed on their driver’s licenses?” Alexis Salkeld Garcia, 34, of Austin, a trans woman who changed the gender listed on her driver’s license from male to female a year and a half ago, said the attorney general’s office inquiry made her feel “terrified.” “It’s very specifically targeted, and the one person I don’t want knowing about my gender status is Ken Paxton,” said Salkeld Garcia, a software engineer who worries state officials might try to switch the gender listed on her driver’s license back to male. “I don’t want a cop pulling me over and knowing I’m trans. That is why I changed my gender marker extremely quickly” after transitioning, she said. Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The records obtained by The Post, which document communications between DPS employees, are entitled: “AG Request Sex Change Data” and “AG data request.” They indicate that Paxton’s office sought the records a month after the state Supreme Court ruled that Paxton and Abbott had overreached in their efforts to investigate families with transgender children for child abuse. Paxton’s office bypassed the normal channels — DPS’s government relations and general counsel’s offices — and went straight to the driver license division staff in making the request, according to a state employee familiar with it, who said the staff was told that Paxton’s office wanted “numbers” and later would want “a list” of names, as well as “the number of people who had had a legal sex change.” During the following two months, the employee said, the DPS staff searched its records for changes in the “sex” category of not only driver’s licenses but also state ID cards available from birth, learner’s permits issued to those age 15 and up, commercial licenses, state election certificates, and occupational licenses. The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation for describing internal state discussions. DPS staff members compiled a list of 16,466 gender changes between June 1, 2020, and June 30, 2022, public records show. In the emails, DPS staff members repeatedly referred to the request as coming from the attorney general’s office as they discussed attempting to narrow the data to include only licenses that had been altered to reflect a court-ordered change in someone’s gender. DPS staff members did spot checks on the data, examining records that included names of specific individuals, according to records and the state employee familiar with the inquiry. But it was hard to weed out driver’s licenses that had been changed in error, or multiple times, or for reasons other than gender changes. “It will be very difficult to determine which records had a valid update without a manual review of all supporting documents,” an assistant manager in DPS’s driver license division wrote in an email to colleagues on July 22. On Aug. 4, the division chief emailed staff members, “We have expended enough effort on this attempt to provide data. After this run, have them package the data that they have with the high level explanations and close it out.” On Aug. 18, a senior manager emailed to say a data engineer had “provided the data request by the AG’s office (attached).” Last month, The Post made a request to Paxton’s office for all records the attorney general’s office had directed other state offices to compile related to driver’s licenses in which the sex of the driver was changed, as well as related emails between Paxton’s office and other state agencies. Officials indicated that no such records existed. “Why would the Office of the Attorney General have gathered this information?” Assistant Attorney General June Harden wrote in an email to The Post, later adding, “Why do you believe this is the case?” If they did, Harden said, any records were probably exempt from release because of either attorney-client privilege or confidentiality. Marisol Bernal-Leon, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, later emailed that the office “has reviewed its files and has no information responsive to your request” for either records it had requested from DPS or emails between the attorney general’s office and DPS. Separately, DPS provided The Post with a half-dozen documents spanning three months that referenced the request by Paxton’s office. When The Post shared copies of the records that had been provided by DPS, Assistant Attorney General Lauren Downey noted that “none of the records provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety are communications with the Office of the Attorney General. Our response to your request was accurate.” Downey did not reply to questions about why the DPS emails refer to the request as originating from the attorney general. Paxton’s office has yet to respond to another public records request for any records of its contact with DPS concerning driver’s license changes via means other than email, including phone calls, video meetings and in-person exchanges. The earlier attempt by Paxton and his allies to direct state agencies to identify parents of transgender youths and investigate them for child abuse has mostly been blocked by the courts. Last year, lawmakers in the Republican-dominated legislature failed to pass a measure that would have criminalized gender confirmation care, which major medical associations have deemed science-based medical care. Afterward, state Rep. Matt Krause (R) — chair of the state House committee on general investigating — contacted Paxton, who issued a legal opinion that gender-affirming care for minors could be considered child abuse. Days later, Abbott directed the state child welfare agency to investigate parents facilitating such care for their children, sparking several investigations within days, according to public records. After Abbott issued the directive, agency staff members were told not to communicate in writing about it, including emails and texts, according to public records. Some of the families sued, winning a temporary statewide injunction in Doe v. Abbott, blocking the investigations until the lawsuit reached the state Supreme Court in May. The court overturned the injunction on procedural grounds but found that Paxton’s legal opinion was not binding and that Abbott did not have the authority to direct state child welfare staff members to initiate child abuse investigations of families with transgender children. “[N]either the Governor nor the Attorney General has statutory authority to directly control DFPS’s investigatory decisions,” the court ruled. But Pittman, the attorney who has represented Texas parents of transgender children, noted that lawyers for the attorney general’s office later argued against what the Supreme Court had determined: that Republican leaders “had political tools but they could not direct the department in that way.” He said they appeared to be “ignoring direct Supreme Court statements.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal also sued to stop the investigations on behalf of PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group with more than 600 members in Texas. A county judge in Austin ruled in their favor in September, blocking the state from investigating PFLAG members. That covered most of the dozen families the state admitted to investigating but not necessarily all, said Shelly Skeen, a Dallas-based senior attorney at Lambda Legal working on the PFLAG and Doe v. Abbott cases. Skeen called the attorney general’s inquiry into driver’s license records “a gross violation of privacy” intended to “target one group of people to fire up their base while transgender people are just trying to live their lives.” “The constitutional issues that this raises are equal protection and due process under the 14th Amendment as well as discrimination based on sex,” Skeen said. Some Texas judges seal or restrict access to court records of gender changes for privacy reasons, but also because transgender individuals have been harassed online and faced threats of violence, Skeen said. “If you do not have access to identity documents that match who you are, you are outed every time you show an ID,” Skeen said, “and this is what leads to the discrimination, harassment and violence that transgender people face.” Smith Puerto of Austin, who identifies as transgender and nonbinary, changed their Texas driver’s license from female to male about a year ago. Puerto, 34, who works in client services at a tech company, has been training with their wife of five years to foster an LGBTQ teen and figured they had a better chance applying as a male, although there were risks. “You definitely out yourself,” by changing the documents, said Puerto, who has had surgery, takes hormones and said they often pass as male. “In a state like Texas, you don’t always want people to know you’re different,” Puerto said, calling the attorney general’s inquiry “horrifying.” “It’s scary to know what he would want to do with that data,” they said. Puerto, who moved to Texas from Ohio nine years ago, said they worry Paxton and other Republican leaders who have attacked the rights of transgender children are preparing to target transgender adults like them when the legislature reconvenes. “It’s a constant conversation between my wife and I,” Puerto said. “Every session we hold our breath, kind of watching what horrendous bills get filed, and wonder how much longer can we stay here.” Salkeld Garcia, who also takes hormones and had gender confirmation surgery, demonstrated against anti-trans legislation at the Capitol last year and called the prospect of what lawmakers could do next year “very nerve-racking.” “In Austin we have a vibrant trans community, a beautiful queer community,” she said. “But it’s also scary, because it feels like you have a big fire burning all around you and you don’t know where it will spread or if it will burn you.” CORRECTION A pervious version of this article misstated the year that Gov. Greg Abbott signed a measure limiting the sports teams on which transgender youths could play. It occurred in October 2021, not this year.
Leftists Aren't Capable Of Surviving Economic Collapse – Here's Why There is one factor that constantly stands out as absolutely essential to a person’s chances at surviving a crisis event, and that factor is mindset. Experience and training are highly valuable, having proper tools and preps on hand is a huge advantage. But in the end, without mental toughness and the ability to adapt the most prepared person in the world will still likely bite the dust. Mental toughness is something that can be taught, to a point. This is the entire purpose of basic training methods used in the military: To take mundane details and elevate them in the minds of trainees while wearing them down with physical punishment. The goal is to condition the mind to ignore distraction, to ignore fear and pain while focusing on the task at hand. Failure is not an option in war, just as it is not an option in survival. Those who embrace distraction and embrace failure because they think it will make things easier for them are filtered out of the recruitment pool, or the gene pool. It is no coincidence that the US military today is dealing with some of the worst recruitment conditions they have ever seen in terms of people being physically and mentally incapable of finishing basic training. The Pentagon currently estimates that 77% of young Americans are unfit for recruitment without a waiver for obesity, drug use and mental health problems. Meaning, Gen Z is so unfit physically and mentally if there was a major war almost 80% of them would be erased from existence. The problem has become so bad that militaries in the US and throughout the west are being forced to lower standards just to meet minimum personnel goals. One can argue that many young people don’t want to join the military anyway, but this is besides the point. Even if they wanted to, they would not be up to the task. There are a number of reasons for this development, but I would suggest that the spread of leftist ideology among 63% of Americans age 18-29 according to polls has created a survival vacuum – A generation of mental weaklings. It’s important to remember that younger people have adopted more liberal views for decades, but the political left is not liberal today. The leftists of today are full-bore Marxists, both economically and culturally. They support establishment centralization, they support economic centralization, they support corporate centralization, they support authoritarianism and censorship, they support moral relativism and they applaud the concept of an all pervasive welfare state. In 1980 you might have been able to find a large number of mentally tough people that considered themselves Democrats. Today, you will not find anyone. With America hovering in a precarious netherworld between stagflationary crisis and deflationary crisis depending on which poison the Federal Reserve chooses to give the country, the stage has been set for an economic disaster similar to the Great Depression or worse (read my analysis on this situation HERE). In two years or less, our system, which is already dealing with a number of threats including high prices and supply chain instability, will not remain functional in the manner most people are accustomed. If we accept this inevitability, we must then ask a logical question: Who is going to rebuild? Whoever inherits the mantle will either bring America back to freedom and prosperity, or plunge our society into perpetual tyranny. It all depends on who survives the crisis. One thing that gives me some hope is the fact that leftists as a sub-group of our population are completely incapable of surviving a major economic crisis event. This is not to say that I wish them all to die; I’m only pointing out the reality that most of them won’t make it because they are ill equipped to handle a calamity. Here are the reasons why a post-collapse world would probably be devoid of common leftists… Leftists Thrive On Crisis, But Die Out During Collapse Leftists have a tendency to exploit crisis and tragedy to shore up power and expand their numbers through fear, but there’s a problem with this tactic. If the crisis is fabricated, a tempest in a teapot, then they do very well; if the crisis turns into an actual disaster with real world consequences including financial decline, supply chain disruptions, shortages and civil unrest, they have no tools to deal with the effects other than mob action and looting. What happens if they use mob action and looting when the rule of law is no longer a factor in a country with millions of guns? They will die, by the tens of thousands, as people defend their businesses and homes. The violent hordes we witnessed during the BLM riots would not last long during a collapse scenario where people are more inclined to use deadly force. Leftists Are Anti-Preparedness The political left has spent the better part of the past 15 years demonizing the concept of preparedness as a tinfoil hat philosophy for “right-wing extremists.” They have set themselves up for complete failure by refusing to acknowledge the practicality of prepping, just so they can attack their political opponents. The stupidity of it is truly mind boggling. There are some indications that the covid lockdowns may have shocked a small number of them out of their foolishness. It’s hard to deny the threat of economic collapse when the beginnings of collapse are right in front of your face. That said, prepping is not the only requirement for survival, and progressives buying a few months of food and some guns is not going to save them. Leftists Have An Aversion To Hardship The vast majority of people that argue in favor of an expanding welfare state are on the left. While conservatives support individual charity for those that deserve it, leftists believe that people need to be forced by government to provide and pay for others who may not deserve it. This ideal is driven by their desire to avoid hardship. I find that leftists often have delusions of grandeur. They assume that they are destined for great things, that they are smarter than the rest of us and that work or sacrifice are problems relegated to the rural “peasants” in “flyover country.” Their vision of work is a daycare, a college campus, a place to socialize, find comfort and self identity, do the minimal amount of labor required and then collect a paycheck. Just look how leftist dominated Twitter was being operated a few months ago – It was not a workplace, it was a day spa for lunatics. These kinds of people are not equipped to endure the backbreaking struggle necessary to build a survivable environment. They wouldn’t know where to begin. When confronted with hard times, leftists do not ask “How can I fix this problem and improve my situation?” Instead they ask “Who is to blame for my misery and how can I make them pay?” Leftists Have No Practical Skill Sets The avoidance of technical skill sets is a real problem for progressives. There are a handful of people on the left that engage in micro-farming and other basic skills as a form of activism, but they are few and their methods are limited by their ideology. As noted above, leftists believe themselves to be too valuable to be wasted on production. Rather, they see themselves as “management,” the people in charge of the people that do the manual labor. A person could get by on that kind of thinking in a first-world environment where office jobs, tech jobs, government jobs and social work is the norm, but in a collapse environment there are no management positions, there are no office workers, there are no elementary school teachers, there are no trust and safety advisors, there are no platform moderators and there are no bureaucrats. You either have a valued knowledge set that can be traded, or you have nothing. You can either produce necessities for yourself, or you can’t. The development of the information age and the data driven economy of first world nations has made matters even worse by convincing people that data is a currency. This is a concept that leftists in particular adore because they think labor will become a thing of the past; they will only need their brain and a laptop to provide everything they need. It’s a delusion. The “Metaverse” is a facade, a con, and there will always be a need for humans to dig in the dirt, to forage and hunt, to farm and to build with their own hands. As the economy derails further, progressives are going to realize this too late. Leftists Rely On Government To Fix Their Problems If the idea of taking matters into your own hands is abhorrent to you, then you might be a leftist. Leftists view individual action during a crisis as almost criminal; it is important to them that the correct authorities with the correct permissions handle any dangerous situation. Leftists love to defer to the “experts” because this takes the responsibility out of their hands, along with the blame should something go wrong. But what happens when government is not functional enough to save the day? What happens when inflation or supply chains or personnel shortages make it impossible for government officials to help. What happens when government officials don’t want to help? What happens when they are corrupt and they want to see you suffer? Leftists rarely consider such possibilities. For them, the idea that government could break down, that the grid could break down and that the rule of law could break down is a conspiracy theory. It has only happened hundreds of times around the world in modern history, but because they have never experienced the threat personally they think it is impossible. These are the kinds of people that die very quickly during collapse. Leftists Value Feelings Over Reason The root foundation of leftist ideology is that everything is relative according to one’s personal feelings. That is to say, they believe that their feelings shape their reality, and that “their truth” is the only truth that matters. There are some subjective truths that are near-universal which is why moral conscience is a thing that exists in every culture in the world. That said, personal ideals are still subject to the forces of nature. You cannot pretend that you are not starving when you are starving. You cannot pretend that you are not dehydrated when you desperately thirsty. You cannot feel your way out of a crisis, the crisis is not subject to your fantasies, the crisis will step on your throat and teach you otherwise. At bottom, their feelings do not matter. They are irrelevant. And this is a lesson leftists will learn as the system continues to degrade. They can cry and scream and wail and make all the demands they want for fairness and equity and welfare but in the end they will face the clarity of self reliance or they will face the Ferryman. It’s not my purpose here to revel in the erasure of the political left. I am only pointing out that modern leftist ideology is a product of extremely safe and controlled environments where people have the privilege to engage in frivolity. They THINK they want deconstruction. They THINK they want chaos as a means to break the system and rebuild it in their image. What they don’t realize is that if they get what they want most of them will die in the process and they will not be around to see their naive Utopia come to fruition.
Wherever you land on the trans debate, we can have universal agreement that the GQP does not have the answer to any medical or psychological issues and should not do policy: