Ron Brownstein struggled with the idea that blue states could be on the wrong end of federal civil rights issues on Friday’s CNN This Morning as he claimed that the Trump Administration is trying to use “the power of the federal purse to rescind rights.”
Host Jessica Dean began by reading from Brownstein’s recent article on the subject, where he laid out what his definition of “rights” is, "Trump has threatened to cut off federal funds for states, cities, hospitals, and universities unless they adopt a wide range of conservative social policies, such as banning transgender girls from competing in high school sports and ending diversity programs in education and employment. Since most red states have already adopted these policies, the principal effect of Trump's orders is to attempt to impose these ideas on Democratic-controlled states that have already considered them at the state level, and virtually without exception, spurned them."
Brownstein then joined the show to elaborate, “Yeah. So we have seen an enormous divergence over the last four or five years in the states on a range of social policy. Virtually every red state—every Republican-controlled state has banned transgender girls from high school sports. Has banned gender-affirming care for minors. The vast majority of them have imposed limits on how classroom teachers can talk about race and gender in K-to-12 grades, and most of them have also restricted diversity issues, particularly in public education.”
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