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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Last Monday, South Dakota Governor Christine Noem signed a bill that bans puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for minors. Yet the governor has drawn fire from conservatives in the past for vetoing bills related to transgender policies, like keeping biological males out of women's sports, and dozens of trans measures supported by voters have stalled out in the state's House and Senate over the past decade. Conservatives in other red States say their proposals to restrain the transgender movement have also faced an uphill battle and often fail. For this episode of Morning Wire, we talk to Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. She'll explain why trans activists have managed to find legislative success even in the reddest states and why Republican lawmakers often go against the will of their own voters on social issues.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thanks for waking up with us. It's Sunday, February 19th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Recent surveys revealed that as many as 67% of Americans don't have a will. Don't put it off any longer. Take control of your legacy and create your will today for just $119. And in as little as five minutes. Epic will can help you create your last will and testament, living will, and even health care power of attorney. Their step-by-step online form makes it incredibly easy. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Go to epicwill.com and use promo code WIRE to save 10% off your complete will package. That's epicwill.com, promo code WIRE.
--:-- Megan Basham: I think the assumption for most people is that Democrats are pushing pro-trans legislation or blocking bills that seek to curtail the influence of the transgender lobby. Most people assume Republicans are doing the opposite. Is that not the case?
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Well, I would say that Republican leaders have become more supportive of things like keeping males out of women's sports or bathrooms now that that issue appears to have reached something of a tipping point as far as the public's awareness goes. But I don't know that I would say it's true that a lot of Republicans have been eager to support that kind of legislation. In fact, in some cases, you might say they had to be dragged to it kicking and screaming. And in other cases, they just simply refused to do so.
--:-- Megan Basham: One notorious example of that is former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and he just left office last month. Well, Arkansas is obviously a very red state, and its voters overwhelmingly trend right on social issues. Yet in 2021, Hutchinson vetoed a bill that would have made Arkansas the first state to ban trans surgeries and puberty blockers for minors. And this was despite a majority of all Arkansas voters and 80% of Republican voters supporting it.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Now, in Arkansas's case, the House and Senate were able to override that veto. So it was called the SAFE Act and it did become law. But the question was why Hutchinson vetoed the bill. Now, he said he was doing it out of concern for medical privacy and individual rights, but his critics argued that he was beholden to big corporate interests who were very much against this bill. And it led to a rather notorious exchange between Hutchinson and Fox News personality, Tucker Carlson.
--:-- Megan Basham: My question is, have you spoken to any of the biggest employers, the big companies in Arkansas about this? Have you taken any calls from Tyson's, from Dillard, from Walmart? Has anyone from those companies called you about this bill?
--:-- Tucker Carlson: No, but Tucker, you're- I just want to clarify very quickly and I just want to be clear on this. Have you spoken to any corporate interest in the state of Arkansas about this bill?
--:-- Megan Basham: Tucker, I answered that I answered that question and I said, no, I have not. However, that same day, the Walton family, who, of course, owned controlling shares in Walmart, put out a statement saying that they supported Hutchinson's decision to veto the SAFE Act. So you have to wonder how much Hutchinson welcomed the timing of that particular statement, because based on that, Carlson claimed that Hutchinson lied to him. And he also said that he spoke to sources who told him that Hutchinson was vying for a seat on Walmart's board after leaving office.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I think that all of that kind of sets the table for this issue, because really Hutchinson is not alone on this. And another significant example is Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota. Now, Noem has been considered a rising Republican star for the last few years, and a lot of people have been talking about her future potential on the national stage. But she ran into quite a bit of trouble when it came to a bill that banned biological men from competing in women's sports after the National Collegiate Athletic Association changed the rules that would allow men to do so.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Riley Gaines was a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer for the University of Kentucky, and she found herself competing against University of Pennsylvania's Leah Thomas, a biological male. Thomas immediately began breaking records in the division, but Gaines recently explained on the Daily Wire sports show Crane & Company that unfairness is not actually the only reason she opposes the NCAA's rule. She says she also opposes it because it puts women in some traumatic situations.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I was in the locker room, obviously putting my suit on and all of a sudden it got dead silent. I turn around. I mean, this person's towering over every other person in the locker room, drops the clothes, full male, like a fully intact male with male genitalia. And almost subconsciously you just cover, like it's just a subconscious inherent feeling when you see a male with male parts watching you undress.
--:-- Megan Basham: It was like, I mean, I thought I was missing something. I thought, am I like not grasping something? Why is no one talking about this? Why is a coach not sticking up for us? Why is someone within the NCAA, why were we not warned? We did not give our consent for this.
--:-- Megan Basham: So social conservatives, like Gaines, expected Republican governors to take their side. Yet when the legislation that did that first went to Noam's desk in 2021, just like Hutchinson, she vetoed it. Naturally, a lot of people wondered why. Noam said it was because she was worried about lawsuits from the NCAA. And she also said that it would pull tournaments from the state, which could cost millions of dollars and up to 100 jobs. But Nate Hockman, a journalist at National Review, heard some whispers that there was another reason Noam might have vetoed that bill.
--:-- Megan Basham: People on the ground in South Dakota were telling him about a major pharmaceutical company, Sanford Health. It's the largest employer in the state and it's heavily involved in state politics. So Hockman did a deep dive investigation into just who Sanford Health is and how they might benefit from this pro-trans legislation. And also how deeply they're connected to Republican lawmakers in the state.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I spoke with Hockman last week about what he found. I did some reporting on that at the time in terms of a lobbyist from Sanford having very close relationship to them. But what I spent a couple months digging into with this piece on the more expansive way the LGBT lobby and big pharma has infiltrated South Dakota, exposed that while Noam is certainly complicit in it, she's far from the only Republican who is in bed with the pharmaceutical company and with the LGBT lobby.
--:-- Megan Basham: And it really spans the entire South Dakota GOP establishment despite the fact that South Dakota is one of the most conservative states in the country. So as he tracked Sanford's ability to block the sports bill he saw a pattern that been reflected in other deep red states where powerful progressive businesses have been able to enact their interests over the wishes of voters.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what did Hockman find about Sanford Health specifically? Well, the first thing was that like Walmart in Arkansas, it has really an outsized footprint in South Dakota. It's the state's largest employer by a degree of almost seven, and no other company even comes close. But he also discovered that Sanford's corporate culture trends not just left, but what he called radically left.
--:-- Megan Basham: At least when it comes to transgenderism, part of the reason for that appears to be financial. So similar to news surrounding Vanderbilt Hospital's pediatric gender clinic in Tennessee, Sanford has the potential to make a lot of money with surgeries and treatments on people, including kids, who believe they're transgender.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, Hockman particularly focused on a doctor named Keith Hansen, who, among other medical practices, provides sex change procedures to children. And he sits on the board of directors for the South Dakota State Medical Association. He's also a regular donor to Noem and other state Republicans. In one year, he provided transgender treatments to at least 19 minors and has said that he will treat children as young as eight.
--:-- Megan Basham: Hanson is a perfect example. He's a representation of how Stanford's influence spreads across all of these different institutions in the state, despite the fact that the state's population itself is extremely conservative and certainly would not be happy if they knew more about the kind of things that people like Dr. Keith Hanson do.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Sanford Health is clearly ideologically committed to gender ideology, but it's also convenient, I think, that aligns with a lot of their business interests and their medical practices. And they advocate for it through activists and actual medical practitioners like Dr. Keenan.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Sanford's influence went far beyond Noam. On any number of state boards, Hockman found Sanford executives. And this led to LGBT activist groups being awarded lucrative state contracts. For example, the Transformation Project, a group that holds gender identity summits and has protested against bills that ban sex change surgeries and medications for minors, received $136,000 from the South Dakota Department of Health to develop a health worker program.
--:-- Megan Basham: There are actual Stanford employees, current Stanford employees, including one who's a public affairs specialist, which basically means lobbying for Stanford interests, who actually serves in the state legislature right now, which to me seems like an obvious conflict of interest, particularly because their primary source of income is coming from Stanford rather than their job as a legislature.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Stanford across the board has a lot of influence both external to the legislature, both with sort of lobbyists and in factists making their presence known at legislature, but also literally with the Republicans who are supposed to be representing the people of South Dakota themselves.
--:-- Megan Basham: And so again and again, issues that most South Dakota voters supported were getting defeated in a legislature that had a Republican supermajority. Along with the sports bill, it included a bill that required use of public school bathrooms and locker rooms to correspond to a person's sex, a bill that banned changing genders on birth certificates, a bill that protected medical conscience rights, and a bill that required schools to inform parents if their child expressed a desire to change their gender.
--:-- Megan Basham: All of this legislation just kept dying on the vine, thanks largely to Republican lawmakers who were either closely connected to Sanford or, in a number of cases, actually drawing salaries from Sanford. And then on the other side of the coin, pro-transgender policies continued to advance.
--:-- Megan Basham: For instance, the head of the state Department of Corrections enacted a policy to allow male inmates to request transfers to women facilities if they claim to be transgender. And they could also request taxpayer sex change drugs.
--:-- Megan Basham: After doing this deep dive, does Hockman believe this primarily is just a self-interest issue? I mean, are politicians basically just protecting their relationships with big donors and corporations with an eye towards positions that they might take when they leave politics?
--:-- Nate Hockman: You know, that's definitely a key component, but there could also be some genuine ideological divides here. And it comes down to the evolving idea of what it means to be a conservative.
--:-- Nate Hockman: So there's an older notion of Republicans being the party of business. And because of that, there's a natural disinclination to go against the companies providing jobs. But as corporations have moved to the left, younger conservatives are now tending to chafe at the idea that the GOP has any guaranteed loyalty to corporate interests.
--:-- Nate Hockman: I think with Republicans in South Dakota and a lot of other areas, what you have is a lot of sort of old school kind of chamber of commerce types who their conception of what it means to be a Republican and a conservative is basically something akin to the business of big business is the business of America, right? What the chamber of commerce, big business interests say, you know, that's more or less what's good for a seat. What's good for the economy, what's good for GDP growth. That's more or less how we view all policy.
--:-- Nate Hockman: And the problem is when big business really starts to push left on these cultural issues, a lot of those Republicans are willing to leave social conservatives behind. And they don't even really see a contradiction because for them, really, conservatism was always just about being pro-business. And the social issues were at best kind of a marginal thing that is not really their responsibility to deal with.
--:-- Nate Hockman: But you have other leaders who've started to take a different tack than this more traditional Republicanism. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference last year that clearly interrogated that idea that conservatism necessarily means supporting corporations.
--:-- Nate Hockman: I think the lesson for people on the right is I think there was a generation of people that kind of the muscle memory was just, if it's private, just defer to it. But corporatism is not the same as free enterprise. And I think too many Republicans, I think too many Republicans have viewed limited government to basically mean whatever is best for corporate America is how we want to do the economy.
--:-- Nate Hockman: But that is a means to an end. It's not an end in and of itself. So part of what we may be seeing is a party just coming to terms with its changing relationship with big business, where it used to be very friendly on social issues. It's now become largely adversarial.
--:-- Megan Basham: Does it feel like the tide has turned a little bit this year? You know, for some, certainly Noam did go on to later sign a bill similar to that first one that she vetoed. But I do think you're still seeing that disconnect with voters in some places. Like last March, for instance, Utah Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a transgender sports bill. And in explaining his decision, he once again said legislators were unable to understand the financial impacts that will be forced on the state.
--:-- Megan Basham: Governor Eric Holcomb in Indiana did the same. But in both cases, the state legislators were able to overturn those vetoes. So this is very much still an issue on which Republican politicians are divided, even though polls show Republican voters aren't divided at all.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, as with any political issue, it's always a good idea to follow the money.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Megan, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, anytime.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Bye.
