The final straw. “A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights” was the title of America’s top paper. Ohio Governor was praised in the article below. The new veto of an anti-trans bill by Mike DeWine was criticized as a homage to the “mainstream” heartland Republicans of old who supported the idea that government should not interfere with people’s lives.
That was it. My point of failure. To be clear, the governor’s veto of one of the small, helpless majority of trans children and their families was a welcome relief for them because they had to put up with an unrelenting barrage of state Republican bills that threatened their protection, dignity, and freedom. To be absolutely distinct, Mike DeWine is not a supporter of trans rights, and he is anything but, despite the national media’s uninformed jubilation over finding a “mainstream” Republican who is willing to live and let live.
DeWine waited until the last minute before signing Ohio House Bill 68, approving, rejecting, or allowing it to take effect. This was a complete no-brainer. However, he went through the motions of “taking a hard look” at the benefits and drawbacks associated with outlawing gender-affirming care for children and transgender athletes in girls’ sports, as if the pros had any factual or convincing medical justification for doing so or for criticizing trans athletes.
DeWine proposed government regulations to determine what is best for trans kids, parents, and doctors right away after waiting until reelection was no longer a political issue to say that government shouldn’t make that decision. Then he made a point of praising the radical zealot behind HB 68 for violently inciting fear and hatred in people who had already been bullied and shunned.
A Statehouse supermajority of fearmongers is firing back at DeWine and threatening an override in an effort to use the transgender community as a MAGA beating case. Expect the governor to use a public pressure campaign to keep Ohioans who simply want to live their lives as they please in order to combat their ugliness. He will reject a last-minute budget provision that allowed doctors to deny LGBTQ+ health care on moral grounds, just as he did in 2021 when he “enshrined LGBTQ+ bias into law.”
Without a doubt, I’m happy DeWine made the right decision with the hateful anti-trans bill. However, he frequently claimed that private medical decisions shouldn’t “be made by the state, not the state of Ohio” due to his egregious hypocrisy. This so-called “mainstream” Republican was all in favor of the state of Ohio and the government deciding women’s private health care rather than leaving it up to their own best judgment.
DeWine vowed he had “gone as far as we can” to openly outlaw abortion in the state before the Supreme Court overturned 50 years of abortion rights. The government reinstated the harsh rules he signed into law in 2019 that almost made the procedure illegal as soon as Roe was repealed. It notably forced a ten-year-old female rape victim to leave the state in order to receive emergency medical care that she and her household were denied in Ohio.
In a TV commercial this year that portrayed sexual liberation as an excessive gate, the governor and his wife ruthlessly lied about an amendment to the constitution to protect abortion access. DeWine will support a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate the next time who is open to, if not committed, outlawing abortion nationwide and violating Ohio laws. He is certainly not a reasonable Republican.
It’s more like a bought-and-sold legislator. DeWine slyly signed another bill into law the day before he vetoed HB 68, effectively increasing taxes on natural gas customers by adding fees to their bills. The governor’s leniency is yet another favor extended to the oil and gas sector. This day, he required Ohioans to pay for fanciful energy projects tens of millions of dollars annually.
He signed a bill earlier this year that also (absurdly) declared fossil fuel “green energy,” giving natural gas conglomerates the go-ahead to drill baby drill in Ohio’s beloved state parks. DeWine is certainly not a sensible Republican on democratic energy policy. A few months into his first term, he signed “the worst energy bill of the 21st century” into law, which is notoriously connected to Ohio’s worst public corruption case (involving utility subsidies).
DeWine is never a Democratic centrist on sensible gun safety. He pledged to “do something” to stop the epidemic of gun violence following the horrifying Dayton mass shooting. Every bill for the gun lobby that arrived at his office was signed. In order to protect the public, he relaxed Ohio’s gun laws and gave in to weapons absolutists who oppose any limitations on firearms.
DeWine’s surrender to concealed carry (without a permit or training), which police warned would make Ohio less safe, was the worst slap in the face for Daytonians. Despite the overwhelming need of Ohioans for
reasonable gun reform, more intense gun legislation is passing through the General Assembly, which DeWine will definitely support. No matter how badly the national media wants him to be, this isn’t a mainstream Republican throwback to moderate conservatism.
DeWine also doesn’t support anything that puts political capital at risk. We are aware of his behavior in Ohio under one-party, radical control: Overbearing.
