Fantastic news! The reader who tipped me off said, “Now I don’t have to worry about my daughters having to compete against males.”:

Connecticut’s policy allowing transgender girls to compete as girls in high school sports violates the civil rights of athletes who have always identified as female, the U.S. Education Department has determined in a decision that could force the state to change course to keep federal funding and influence others to do the same.

A letter from the department’s civil rights office, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, came in response to a complaint filed last year by several cisgender female track athletes who argued that two transgender female runners had an unfair physical advantage.

The office said in the 45-page letter that it may seek to withhold federal funding over the policy, which allows athletes to participate under the gender with which they identify. The policy is a violation of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that guarantees equal education opportunities for women, including in athletics, the office said.

Read it all. One more clip from it:

“All that today’s finding represents is yet another attack from the Trump administration on transgender students,” said Chase Strangio, who leads transgender justice initiatives for the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT and HIV Project.

Well, you might say that. Or you might say that today’s finding represents a defense from the Trump administration of female student athletes from unfair competition. We all know perfectly well that this never would happen under a Democratic administration, certainly not Joe Biden’s:

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

It is no exaggeration to say that Joe Biden wants your student athlete daughter to have to compete against biological males, who are physically stronger and have more endurance. This crackpottery is “the civil rights issue of our time.” This is insane. But that’s where the party is. They don’t even think you can have good-faith disagreement on the issue. There is no room for compromise when it comes to the right of student athletes with bigger bone structure, greater lung capacity, and larger hearts to compete against females, as females, and use their biological advantage to win trophies — and don’t you say otherwise, you hateful bigot!

As regular readers know, I am beyond fed up with Donald Trump. The other day, I wrote in this space that Trump has wasted his presidency on tweeting and starting stupid controversies instead of getting stuff done. A reader wrote to say that from a socially conservative point of view, that’s not really true. He sent this lengthy list of policy decisions by the Trump administration to contradict what I said. It really is quite substantive. Though I still believe that Trump has wasted far too much time, energy, and authority jacking around on social media, that list compels me to admit that I was wrong the other day. This is why it matters to have a Republican president.

Someone also sent me this essay in The Forward by Eli Steinberg, arguing that Trump has been a “warrior for the faithful” who will get Steinberg’s vote as an Orthodox Jew. Excerpts:

I don’t think President Trump is motivated to correct this injustice by his own deep feelings of personal faith, so much as by a desire to align himself politically with people of faith. But that is also very meaningful. And it’s why, despite everything, he will likely win the votes of the faithful overwhelmingly in 2020. It’s why he will get mine.

I did not vote for Trump in 2016. I wrote in “Anyone Else” as a means of protest against the two bad choices we were given. I did not think it was worth taking the chance of allowing Trump to redefine conservatism, and I argued that it was preferable for Hillary Clinton to win than to lose the party to Trump.

I was wrong.

I don’t believe I was wrong in the calculation I made in deciding not to vote for either major presidential candidate in 2016. At that time, it was entirely reasonable to think it preposterous that Trump, who had no history as a conservative, would expend any of his own capital to move the ball forward to that end.

But Trump did. Steinberg says he still has serious problems with Trump, but he says Trump’s clear acts on behalf of protecting religious liberty (e.g., executive orders, nominating judges who care about it) are more important. He goes on:

The President may not have your vote. But if you want to have your electoral way in the future, you would do well to understand why he has mine. You may not want to champion faith communities, but the constant attempt to marginalize us is going to lead us to embrace someone who does.

Read it all.

Steinberg has a point. He’s a reluctant Trump supporter, but a Trump supporter he is, because he knows what it will mean to elect a Democrat, given how hostile the party has become to religious traditionalists.

It might be that all things considered, some religious and social conservatives will conclude that the reasons for voting against Trump outweigh the reasons to vote for him. But there are more reasons to vote for him, in spite of everything, than I realized the other day.

(I remind you all that I am going to spend the rest of the year talking about the good and the bad of Trump and Biden, leading up to the election. For me personally, the question is whether or not Trump represents a threat to the common good great enough to justify voting for the candidate of a party that thinks religious and social conservatives are bigots who need to be suppressed. No matter who wins, I think the country is in for a bad four years. Because TAC is a non-profit entity, I am not going to tell you how I’m going to vote, or even if I’m going to vote in this presidential contest. So don’t even start that with me.)

UPDATE: CNN reporting that GOP political strategists are starting to worry that Trump’s travails are going to drag the party’s candidates down, and they might lost the Senate. Excerpt:

In the four years since winning the GOP nomination, Trump has solidified his position within the party. That has made it harder for Republicans in Congress to distance themselves from him without antagonizing his base. That, say Republican operatives, risks keeping away voters who may consider the GOP but don’t like the President.

“It’s a very, very tough environment. If you have a college degree and you live in suburbia, you don’t want to vote for us,” said one long-time Republican congressional campaign consultant, who added there is a serious worry about bleeding support from both seniors and self-described independent men.

I am a college-educated urbanite who is a conservative, registered Independent, and I very much don’t want to vote for Donald Trump. As a social and religious conservative, this shouldn’t be a hard vote for me: I should be a solid, dependable Republican vote. My state, Louisiana, is almost certainly going to vote for Trump, and neither of our senators, both Republicans, are up for re-election. I don’t know how many conservative voters there are like me, and in a state like mine, it really doesn’t matter. But in swing states, or states with GOP senators up for re-election, the party can’t afford to lose voters like me (even if we don’t vote for Biden, but write in a third party candidate, or stay home). For people with my political priorities, this is about as bad a choice as it gets. Losing the Senate would be a harder blow than losing the presidency. The Republicans might do both.