Conversion Therapy, Cuba, and Hungary

Dear Friends,

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that state-level bans on “conversion therapy” for LGBT minors violate the First Amendment. In an essay for The Free Press, I explain how such bans ironically allowed for a new type of conversion therapy that attempted to make gay kids trans.

While it’s too soon for me to pronounce judgment on President Trump’s leadership in the war against Iran, I have no compunction saying that he may be on the verge of an accomplishment that has eluded his predecessors for seven decades: the liberation of communist Cuba. In the Wall Street Journal, I argue that Trump’s hawkish policy towards the island dictatorship repudiates Barack Obama’s normalization without conditions.

Finally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peaceful relinquishment of power after losing an election last week has prompted a curious reaction from some commentators: that the man who ruled Hungary for the past 16 years couldn’t have been an autocrat because autocrats don’t surrender power willingly. In the Free Press, I reveal the intellectual poverty of this claim.

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Best,

Jamie

P.S.: You may be interested in reading an essay in the Atlantic by my husband Josef Palermo in which he reveals the chaos, corruption, and incompetence he witnessed working at the “Trump” Kennedy Center.