Q Toon: End Around

The Donald Joffrey Trump administration announced this week that whether or not transgender students can safely pee in school lavatories should be up to state legislatures to decide. So let's take a look at how that's going, shall we?

Republicans in the state of Texas are pushing Senate Bill 6, the Lone Star version of North Carolina's phenomenally unsuccessful Bathroom Bill to require men who were born female to use the ladies' room and women who were born male to use the men's room. As in North Carolina, SB6 is aimed at overturning local ordinances and school policies protecting transgender rights.

The National Football League and National Basketball Association have come out against Texas's "Bathroom Bill," warning that if any bill seen as "discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there, that would certainly be a factor considered when thinking about awarding future events."

With a potential loss of hundreds of millions in sports revenue, Texas Governor Greg Abbott shot back, "We don't care what the NFL thinks and certainly what their political policies are because they are not a political arm of the state of Texas or the United States of America. They need to learn their place in the United States, which is to govern football, not politics.”

Y'all remember when Thomas Jefferson about the wall of separation between sports and state.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and bill supporter Sen. Dawn Buckingham (R-Austin) protested that sports venues are exempt from SB6. Maybe.

When asked whether businesses and sporting venues would definitely be exempt, [Buckingham] added, "Well, we'll see what the language looks like, but it's my understanding that that's the intent — to realize that there are some complicating factors there and our priorities are really the schools."

Sports organizations may be the most prominent opponents of the legislation, but they are not alone. Major investment firms have also warned Texas of their opposition to the bill.

"As professional investors, we know that discrimination is simply bad for business," Matthew Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management, which signed the letter, told the teleconference.

A coalition of Texas convention and tourism leaders predicts a short-term GDP losses of $8 billion in revenue. Bob Jameson, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau, worries that the impact to his city alone could be massive:

"Business and leisure tourism delivers a $2 billion economic impact each year in Fort Worth and supports more than 20,000 jobs. An important driver behind that is our friendly hospitality and a strong message that all are welcome here. We want to maintain that.”

“Restroom laws are one of the top policy deterrents for planning conventions, conferences and meetings,” said Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of the Professional Convention Management Association. “Our industry holds 1.83 million meetings annually and brings $28 billion in U.S. federal, state and local taxes annually; with more than $280 billion in annual U.S. direct spending spurred by our sector. Should SB6 be signed into law, you ensure Texas’s future percentage of these taxes and spending will exponentially be reduced.”

Coming Attractions

This Week's Sneak Peek

Crowd scenes are fun to draw, but then you have to color them.

Vi Är Alla Svenska

Ohhhhkaaayyyyy.... What is Donald Joffrey Trump trying to distract us from now?

Look Who's Speaking

After two consecutive cartoons featuring Trump administration flacks, Spokespersonback Saturday takes a brief moment to recall mouthpieces of the past.

Brief, because I haven't drawn many cartoons about them.

Not that their faces aren't well known; but I'm usually more interested in highlighting the presidents rather than the schlubs who have to speak for them. But sometimes I want to populate a cartoon with assorted administration figures, or to have someone else speak for the President.

The latter was the case in this 1985 cartoon of Ronald Reagan's Acting Press Secretary, Larry Speakes.

An adversarial relationship between an administration and the White House press corps, as you see,  is nothing new.

I just want to note what an apt name Larry Speakes had for a spokesperson. It's as if he were born to have that job. I can imagine that the family name derived from a long line of Speakespersons for medieval kings and princelings.

There wouldn't be another Press Secretary so aptly named until Barack Obama appointed Josh Earnest, whose name literally means "Just Kidding, But Seriously."

Another item to note is that Speakes, and his immediate successor, Marlin Fitzwater, were "Acting" or "Deputy" Press Secretaries. James Brady was officially kept on in the position of Press Secretary throughout the Reagan administration, in spite of having suffered severe brain injury in John Hinckley, Jr.'s  assassination attempt on the President only two months into the job. (Fitzwater continued as full-fledged Press Secretary in the George H.W. Bush administration.)

Technically, then, Brady was not still Press Secretary when the "Brady Bill" (officially the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) passed the Congress and was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, prompting this cartoon:

The importance of Brady Act in ending Democrats' domination of Congress cannot be understated. Republicans took over both houses in 1994 with loud support of the National Rifle Association in key races. During the George W. Bush administration, with Republicans in charge of the legislative and executive branches of government, hey systematically gutted one firearm safety measure after another. With that monopoly of power again today, in fact, the NRA and its minions in Congress and the White House even want to make sure that mentally unstable Americans have free and easy access to guns.

Just like NRA poster boy John Hinckley, Jr., who is a free man these days.

Mr. Brady is no longer available to comment.

Fake Newsmakers

Just read it from left to right.

Now, I really wish I had posted this cartoon before Donald Joffrey Trump's little hour-and-a-half press tantrum yesterday. I had a little problem with my scanner this week, and it was the regular syndicated cartoon's turn to appear here yesterday, so I figured I'd just hold off until today.

Well, nobody's talking about the lies of Stephen Miller or Kellyanne Conway now.

Unless it turns out that they are the people who told Mr. Trump that his 304 electoral votes are more than Barack Obama's 332 in 2012, or his 365 in 2008, or Bill Clinton's 379 in 1996 or 370 in 1992, or George H.W. Bush's 470 in 1988.

Boy, I wouldn't want to be whoever that Trump loyalist was. I'll bet that person is in for a serious finger wagging.

Sookie Spice

With a new administration comes a host of new Saturday Night Live characters, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's combative daily briefings have quickly shown him to be ripe for parody. It may be a one-joke sketch, but then, isn't that special? So are nearly all memorable SNL characters.

Because they're good enough, they're smart enough, and doggone it, people like them!

I had to draw this one quickly. HB2 clones are currently moving through the digestive tract of legislatures in Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming; several of those states are immune to the threat of never hosting another Superbowl.