Elizabeth Warren Enlists a Transgender 9-Year-Old to Choose the Education Secretary as the Political Landscape Radically Transforms

[Screenshot from Tom Elliott via Twitter, https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1182465900190011397?]

In case you missed CNN’s Equality Town Hall last night, Elizabeth Warren took a question from a 9-year-old:

“My name is Jacob, and I am a nine-year-old transgender American.”

The audience went nuts.

“What will you do in your first week as president to make sure kids like me feel safer in schools, and what do you think schools need to do better to make sure that I don’t have to worry about anything but my homework?”

CNN invites 9-year-old transgender boy to ask Sen. Warren a question pic.twitter.com/j0yuNG58qA

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 11, 2019

Elizabeth used the opportunity to slam Betsy DeVos:

“Let me start by saying I want to have a secretary of education who both believes in public education and believes in the value of every one of our kids and is willing to enforce our civil rights laws. We’ve had some secretaries of education who’ve been better, and we’ve had one that’s been a whole lot worse. Her name is Betsy DeVos. So, when I’m president, she’ll be gone.”

Poor Betsy can’t seem to catch a break — in December, actress-turned-activist Alyssa Milano, in partnership with Cosmopolitan magazine — offered up a novel take on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas:

“Late one evening at the Department of Ed, thoughts were bouncing around Betsy DeVos’s head. She needed a gift, she started to think. A gift for the people that would really stink.

“All night she stayed up, her mind ablaze; the sh*tty ideas pouring onto the page: No more investigations for off-campus rape; bars and house parties would totally be safe. The meaning of harassment she would remove; squeeze and twist until it was hard to prove. Live hearings where attackers defend their own violence sounded like a good way to keep victims silent.”

Alyssa appeared to have forgotten that law enforcement exists. To her, it’s the Department of Education that’s supposed to investigate crimes.

Elizabeth wants Jacob to help pick the next J. Edgar:

“I want to make sure that the person I think is the right secretary of education meets you and hears your story, and then I want you to tell me if you think that’s the right person and then we’ll make the deal.”

Thumbs up from the kid.

Jacob’s no stranger to the spotlight. Last October, Good Morning America spotlighted her:

When the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) came out with its first policy statement on the treatment of transgender and gender-diverse youth, Mimi Lemay felt validated.

Her son Jacob, 8, transitioned when he was 4 years old with the support of Lemay and her husband, despite the child’s doctor and therapist urging a “watchful waiting” approach at the time.

“We were trying to hold him back,” said Lemay, who chronicled her early struggles with Jacob in an open letter on Boston.com that went viral. “Finally, my husband and I came to the conclusion that the longer we kept him in limbo — one name at home and one at school — the more he would accrue harm. That was evident to us and we made the decision to transition.”

Now that previously-outdated doctor’s on board.

“This (the AAP’s policy statement) will go a long way in fixing that,” Lemay said. “And I hope that it’s widely followed. I would like to see the AAP and medical schools get together and make this mandatory.”

The academy found that most mental health problems in gender-diverse children arise from “stigma and negative experiences,” and can be prevented by a supportive family and environment, which includes health care.

The guidelines specifically disavow the “watchful waiting” approach, calling it outdated and based on flawed science.

“More robust and current research suggests that, rather than focusing on who a child will become, valuing them for who they are, even at a young age, fosters secure attachment and resilience, not only for the child but also for the whole family,” the report said.

NBC did a piece on Jacob way back in April of 2015:

Jacob is a happy, healthy, well-adjusted pre-schooler. He has two sisters — one older and one younger.

When Jacob was born, his name was Mia. But by the time he was two, he was telling his parents, “I’m a boy.”

So Jacob’s been, effectively, a transgender activist for quite a while.

Kids seem to be taking over politics as of late, and the transgender thing’s all the rage.

Speaking of transgender and rage, there was also this: