Three Democrats Vote to Imprison, um, Doctors

First gender-affirming-care ban to pass the House does so only because three Democrats supported it

Dec. 18: Greene ban on gender-affirming care for kids got green light from three Democrats … Primetime Trump speech raises questions about why he gave primetime speech … Republicans fail to block forced House vote on Obamacare subsidies … Hegseth taking unfriendly fire from Senate GOP …

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Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) with Guatemala’s then-Pres. Jimmy Morales and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). on Feb. 17, 2018 (Uncredited / Guatemalan government photo.)

Y’know, typically when a batch of Democrats vote for some loathsome piece of legislation targeting persecuted minorities, there’s something like a dozen of them. Safety in numbers.

But just three? Well, then you can focus. You can drill down.

And on Wednesday, three House Democrats didn’t just vote for a loathsome bill, they were responsible for it passing.

The Republican Party, the party actually obsessed with sex, took a break Wednesday from protecting pedophiles to get between kids and their doctors. And their anti-transgender, anti-science, anti-doctor bill wasn’t just loathsome, it was loathmany.

The bill would imprison health-care providers, including doctors and pharmacists, for as long as ten years if convicted of providing gender-affirming care to transgender kids. With the assent¹ of the kids. And the consent of their parents — who could also face jail time.

For providing medical treatment approved by all the medical-treatment approvers. Because Republicans can’t stop thinking about children’s genitals.

The bill is so loathsome that Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Mark Takano (D-CA) said:

“This bill is the most extreme anti-transgender legislation to ever pass through the House of Representatives and a direct attack on the rights of parents to work with their children and their doctors to provide them with the medical care they need. … and its passage will forever be a stain on the institution of the United States Congress.”

The bill is so loathsome that Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) tried to water it down to just limiting funding. And Roy’s so far right he usually tries to water shit up.

The bill is so loathsome that Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) offered an alternative bill — expected to get a vote today — that’s slightly less loathmany, merely banning Medicaid funding for gender-affirming kids whose health-care providers say they should have it.

The bill passed 216-211, meaning if the three Democrat yes votes had been no votes, it would have failed.

Sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), in case anyone forgot her priorities, the bill is the first to pass the House that would ban gender-affirming care, something some states have already enacted. In other words, states that don’t want to protect their transgender kids already have this. So the three Democratic yeses were trying to impose this on the rational states against the popular will.

Four Republicans voted no, meaning the three Democrats had political cover and could’ve argued that voting no was the bipartisan position, instead of making yes a bipartisan position. It’s also harder to claim that this was a political necessity after Republican trans-panic failed at multiple ballot boxes last month. Here are some of Wednesday’s notable votes:

Democratic Yeses

• Henry Cuellar (TX)

• Don Davis (NC)

• Vicente Gonzalez (TX)

Republican Nos

• Gabe Evans (CO)

• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)

• Mike Kennedy (UT)

• Mike Lawler (NY)

Non-Voting Democrats

• Joe Courtney (CT)

• Lucy McBath (GA)

• Eric Swalwell (CA)

But let’s get back to the Democratic yeses.

CUELLAR Most recently, Cuellar was in the headlines for his pre-emptive pardon from Pres. Donald Trump, who was apparently surprised that Cuellar didn’t become a Republican out of gratitude. Cuellar had been indicted for accepting $600,000 in alleged bribes to help Make Azerbaijan Great Again.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) endorsed Trump’s pardon. In a secret ballot, 17 Democrats then restored Cuellar as leader of the Homeland (sic) Security subcommittee on the Appropriations panel. Not the first time House Democratic leadership has protected Cuellar internally (or against progressive primary challengers).

DAVIS A graduate of the notoriously right-wing Christian U.S. Air Force Academy, Davis is often to the right of his party. He opposed putting conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel, even though U.S. law puts conditions on U.S. military aid to everybody. He voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for calling Israel an apartheid state and its campaign in Gaza “genocide.”

Davis² has been backed by more than a dozen pharmaceutical political action committees. Last year he became the only Democrat to vote for reducing government power to negotiate drug prices under Medicare.

GONZALEZ No stranger to transphobia, just last year Gonzalez ran ads touting his opposition to transgender women in women’s sports. Earlier this year, Gonzalez and Cuellar were the only Democrats to vote for banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports at federally funded schools (Davis voted “present”).

During the administration of Pres. Joe Biden, Gonzalez and Cuellar joined seven other reactionary Democrats threatening to sink Biden’s sweeping legislative agenda. The two joined only two other Democrats voting against banning assault weapons.

THEOCRACY As literally no one else will tell you today, Cuellar and Gonzalez were key players in a campaign by American Christian politicians to protect Guatemala’s anti-transgender, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-reproductive rights president, Jimmy Morales.

As I reported in 2023, that effort was covertly spearheaded by the Fellowship Foundation — aka The Family (the National Prayer Breakfast people) — whose members and allies successfully helped destroy a UN anti-corruption task force before Morales could be prosecuted.

NOW WHAT Neither of the two House bills is expected to beat a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, but as Erin in the Morning noted on Monday and TFN is renoting on Thursday, Cuellar, Davis, and Gonzalez aren’t the only House Democrats who have helped Republicans on anti-transgender bills:

• Cuellar

• Davis

• Cleo Fields (LA)

• Shomari Figures (AL)

• Laura Gillen (NY)

• Jared Golden (ME)

• Gonzalez

• Adam Gray (CA)

• Susie Lee (NV)

• John Mannion (NY)

• Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA)

• Kim Schrier (WA)

• Tom Suozzi (NY).

You can find your representative and contact them super-politely about today’s vote, or any, here.

Trump in Primetime Speech Assures Americans They’re Wrong About Themselves and Him

Pres. Donald Trump gave a primetime, televised address to the nation on Wednesday night for no apparent reason that anyone can figure out today. It was apparently intended to convince Americans that the economy is great and he’s going to fix it.

It was so bad it had people nostalgic for The Weave — Trump’s patented technique for losing his train of thought, wandering down some other track, then remembering where he was going and returning to his lies and tyranny already in progress.

Trump said the government is sending checks for $1,776 to U.S. military service members so people will forget that he’s cutting food stamps for millions of America members.

“We’re poised for an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen,” Trump said, which is true, because past economic booms were good.

Trump assured the country that he’s brought prices down, that there’s more work to do, but, “boy, are we making progress.” Inflation is about where it was when he took office.

He said he’s won $18 trillion of foreign investments, which once upon a time he railed against as furriners buying up the country. The White House website says it’s just $9.6 trillion, and some of that includes deals made under Pres. Joe Biden.

STYLE ALERT Trump raced through his remarks at an unusual clip, perhaps to persuade Americans he’s not dying. By contrast, he had the volume cranked up like an old person watching TV³.

Apparently the delivery was off-putting even to those not put off by Trump’s sex abuse, racism, antisemitism, or rank stupidity. “Why is he yelling at us?” right-wing talker Erick Erickson wrote.

Right-wing podcaster Owen Shroyer said, “He seemed to be speed-reading. The charisma was gone. The aura was gone. The swagger was gone. And the message was stale. There was nothing new.”

MEDIA WATCH Good for the Associated Press, which notes that the broadcast networks carried this nothingburger speech, riddled with partisan attacks, after deciding in 2022 not to carry a speech by Biden about threats to democracy because defending democracy was too political.

Typically, such speeches are carried in the event of a national emergency, in this case Trump’s 36% rating on the economy. Wait, no: 33% rating on the economy.

Johnson Falls to Obamacare Mutiny

Pres. Donald Trump’s popularity is so diminished that even House Republicans are rebelling against him and loyal manservant Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Four House Republicans decided to help Democrats force a vote to boost Obamacare using what’s called a discharge petition. It’s the first in this term that isn’t related to the discharges of Jeffrey Epstein (whose Files™ are due for release on Friday!)

Obamacare subsidies expanded as a response to COVID will lapse at the end of this month because Republicans refuse to extend them — despite knowing that insurance companies are dramatically hiking premiums, in some states tripling or even quadtrumpling them.

Unlike Epstein discharges, however, House discharge petitions don’t take effect immediately. Which means the vote won’t happen until next month.

So, even if it passes, even if the Senate approves, even if Trump signs it, some 22 million Americans will be hit with premium hikes they can’t afford for at least a month.

Senate Republicans Open Fire on Hegseth

With only two exceptions, Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted to send Pres. Donald Trump a 2026 military policy bill that will also force Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to release The Boat-iac Killer™ Files. That includes the internal orders for and snuff films of all 25 26 maritime murders, which as of Wednesday now include 99 fatalities.

Unfortunately, the only teeth to the bill are a 25% cut to Hegseth’s travel budget until he releases The Boat-iac Killer™ Files.

Eighteen Democrats voted against the bill, presumably because it’s yet another year of dangerous militarism.

The bill would make it harder for Trump to draw down U.S. troops from Europe and South Korea. And it requires Hegseth to notify Congress of, and explain, high-level removals of officers for doing their job of stopping him.

The murder evidence coverup isn’t the only bone Senate Republicans have to pick with Hegseth.

The Hill reports that more of them are taking issue with Hegseth’s attempt to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for joining five other congressional Democrats in a video urging the troops to obey only military orders that aren’t crimes. Which some of them are.

Hegseth is seeking to recall Kelly, a veteran, to active duty so the Pentagon can be mean to Kelly. At least five Republican senators are unhappy about this. Especially given that some military orders were crimes.

To Air Is Trumpian

The Senate Wednesday passed a bill to undo part of the other bill they passed Wednesday.

The new military-policy bill mentioned earlier actually makes Washington, DC, less safe by eliminating a requirement for military aircraft to use some non-crashy tech thingy that wasn’t being used on Jan. 29 when a U.S. Army helicopter took out a passenger jet over the Potomac. A separate bill will undo that — presuming the House goes along.

That all happened and unhappened on the same day that a new government court filing blamed the helicopter pilots and an air traffic controller for the crash. The pilots, government lawyers say, should’ve spotted the passenger jet. An air-traffic controller allegedly failed to follow visual-separation procedures.

It’s tempting but difficult to blame Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for the crash, coming as it did when they had barely begun to fly the Trump agenda head-on into competent government.

HOWEVER The U.S. military’s pressure campaign in the Caribbean against, um, civilian air travel, continues to escalate.

Twice in two days over the past week, Hegseth’s forces have almost succeeded in taking down more passenger jets.

On Friday, a Jet Blue passenger jet heading from Curaçao to New York had to abruptly stop its climb to avoid colliding with a U.S. Air Force refueling plane, which was flying through Jet Blue’s flight path and had turned off the transponder that reported its position.

On Saturday, a 900EX private jet bound from Aruba to Miami dodged a similar fate crash, also with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reiterated its warning from last month about the threat posed to Americans by U.S. military planes threatening Venezuela for threatening the U.S.:

“Threats could pose a potential risk to aircraft at all altitudes, including during overflight, the arrival and departure phases of flight, and/or airports and aircraft on the ground.”

Sounds like a job for The Boat-iac Killer™!

Release The Wiles Files™!

The White House continued Wednesday to shit on the Vanity Fair reporting on Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Thing is, those interviews were taped. So let’s have ‘em, Vanity Fair! It’s only fair!

A number of you astute Newsfuckers noted on Wednesday the minimal presence of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in the two articles.

But I would argue Miller actually was there. Hiding.

It’s Miller, after all, who pushed federal immigration officials to round up 3,000 people a day. And look at what Wiles said about deportations.

• “I will concede that we’ve got to look harder at our process for deportation.”

• “If somebody is a known gang member who has a criminal past, and you’re sure, and you can demonstrate it, it’s probably fine [sic] to send them to El Salvador or whatever … but if there is a question, I think our process has to lean toward a double-check.”

• On deporting non-criminals and their U.S. citizen children: “I can’t understand how you make that mistake, but somebody did.”

Wiles took herself off the hook for decisions by Pres. Donald Trump that she didn’t agree with by arguing that she told him, “I am the chief of staff, not the chief of you.”

And yet her staff included the Deputy Somebody who ordered the mass deportations she can’t understand. All of Wiles’s critiques of Trump’s deportation policy are admissions of failure to chief her deputy chief of staff.

More Reiner Thoughts

Another reason occurred to me Wednesday why Pres. Donald Trump’s remarks about the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner struck such a shitty chord with the American people.

It’s not just that the Reiners were so great. It’s that Trump so clearly didn’t care about people stunned and saddened by their death. No one has more power than Trump to reach out to people in difficult times, to assure them that America is with them.

Trump elevated his grievances over the moment, the tragedy, and the feelings of the Reiner family. But he also utterly ignored the needs and pain of the American family, the human family.

TCB

CLARIFICATION On Monday’s “The Nicole Sandler Show,” discussing the writers whose works Reiner made into movies, I shouted out Stephen King, William Goldman, and Aaron Sorkin. I neglected to mention Nora Ephron, the brilliant writer of When Harry Met Sally. My bad.

FALLING BEHIND I’ve been missing too many stories lately. Not to mention how behind I am on my own original reporting. So, gonna try to rectify that. Which might also — fair warning! — involve taking a break or breaks from the regular morning TFNs over the two holiday weeks coming up.

NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD I’ll discuss my Venezuela reporting today, Thursday, at 11am eastern time, with Lincoln Project co-founder and fellow Substacker Reed Galen, in a Substack Live that you can watch here.

I’ll be back every Monday on The Nicole Sandler Show at 3:30pm eastern, for free, right here, on Jan. 5, 2026!

SUPPORTING TFN This newsletter exists because every day people choose to pay for it to exist. If that’s you today, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

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Go get ‘em, kids! Trump’s not even trying to squash the revolting Republicans…

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TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

1. I originally, mistakenly, wrote “consent,” which kids are not legally considered capable of giving.

2. This sentence originally said that Davis represents parts of the state’s Research Triangle, but a Newsfucker alerted me — and an online search seems to confirm — that this is not the case. My original source for the misstatement was Stat News, here. Sorry for the error!

3. I do this.