Last Friday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that California would ban state-funded and state-sponsored travel to I...
Last Friday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that California would ban state-funded and state-sponsored travel to Iowa because the state passed a law barring the funding of gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid, making Iowa the 11th state that California has placed on its travel ban.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), seizing the opportunity, hilariously pointed out something that the California government might have missed: their ban would impede the chances of their own senator, Kamala Harris, from traveling to the state that is the first nominating contest in the Democratic Party presidential primaries. He tweeted, "Wow, California's ban on travel to Iowa's really gonna hamstring Kamala Harris's presidential campaign."
Wow, California’s ban on travel to Iowa’s really gonna hamstring Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign....twitter.com/caffthoughts/s…
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Becerra stated when he made his announcement, "The Iowa Legislature has reversed course on what was settled law under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, repealing protections for those seeking gender-affirming healthcare. California has taken an unambiguous stand against discrimination and government actions that would enable it. That's why my office is adding Iowa to the list of states subject to state-funded or sponsored travel restrictions."
Last May, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 766 into law. Reynolds' spokesman Pat Garrett stated, "This narrow provision simply clarifies that Iowa's Civil Rights Act does not require taxpayer dollars to pay for sex reassignment and other similar surgeries. This returns us to what had been the state's position for years."
As caffeinatedthoughts.com pointed out:
It should be noted that Iowa's Medicaid program does not generally cover any cosmetic, reconstructive, or plastic surgery except breast reconstruction surgery following breast cancer and a mastectomy. A California law, Assembly Bill 1887 (AB 1887), passed in 2017, prohibits "state-funded and state-sponsored travel to states that enact a law after June 26, 2015 that voids or repeals an existing state or local protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression." Except it didn't; there was never any guarantee of taxpayer funding for sex reassignment surgery nor did the Iowa Legislature repeal the sexual orientation or gender identity language from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Fox News noted, "Becerra's authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi."
Harris has enough troubles of her own without being banned from traveling to Iowa; her poll numbers plunged right after Rep. Tulsi Gabbard slammed her at a Democratic presidential debate and haven't recovered; she's hovering at a puny 6.2% in the RealClearPolitics average.
And on Tuesday, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, no fan of President Trump, lacerated Harris for her strident comments about impeaching Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after a New York Times "scoop" alleging that he forced his penis into the hands of a girl at Yale. Scarborough snapped, "As a prosecutor, she really should put an 'alleged' in front of the word victims, especially in the case of The New York Times essay, the baffling essay, the baffling editing process that they put forward."
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