The Brew: Helene Couldn’t Stop White House Christmas Tree; Congresswoman Doesn’t Want Trans Men in Capitol Hill Ladies Room

The White House Christmas Tree stands in the Blue Room, Dec. 3, 2001.

Happy Wednesday!

We’ve got a Christmas blend on the menu. (Sue me. I’ve just had my first gingerbread of the season.) But before we get to the inspiring story of this year’s White House Christmas tree, let’s look at how the battle over men in women’s bathrooms has arrived on Capitol Hill.

Mace Pushes Ban on Males in Women’s Restrooms on Capitol Hill

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a bill Monday that would bar males who identify as female from using the women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill. According to The Hill, Mace wants her proposal to be part of the rules package for the incoming 119th Congress. Failing that, she will push for legislation.

The bill comes as Congress is set to welcome its first openly transgender member, Delaware’s Sarah McBride, who attacked Mace’s effort to protect women’s spaces.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride said. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

Of course, the Left is jumping all over Mace. In fact, a transgender person by the name of Venus posted on Instagram the desire to kill the congresswoman over the issue. Mace noted the irony in a post on X.

This is so strange to me. 25 years ago I was celebrated as the first woman to graduate from a formerly all-male military college. Today I’m being attacked as a “bigot” for fighting for women's rights.

The radical Left has lost its mind.

— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) November 19, 2024

House Speaker Mike Johnson weighed in as well.

“Let me be unequivocally clear. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman,” he said. “That said, I also believe we treat everybody with dignity.”

Speaker Johnson: “Let me be unequivocally clear. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman. That said, I also believe we treat everybody with dignity.” pic.twitter.com/uFlb3ptaAr

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) November 19, 2024

Weird Thought of the Day: What bathroom did cross-dressing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover use when he arrived on Capitol Hill back in the day? It seems like whatever was good enough for Hoover would be good enough for a freshman member of Congress.

Doxxing Elementary Schoolchildren Whose Parents Opted Them Out of Inappropriate Sex-Ed Class

Chalk up another reason to homeschool your kids or send them to a good Christian private school: The Cherry Hill (New Jersey) School District doxxed about 100 elementary students whose parents opted them out of a graphic, inappropriate sex-ed class.

The names were released in September 2023 after an Open Public Records Act request sought details on which students had been opted out of the state’s new sex-education standards, which, as The Blaze reports, include information about gender identity, puberty, and masturbation.

Superintendent Kwame Morton admits the error in making the names public, insisting the list was redacted, but appeared when the OPRAmachine database converted the PDF file to a different format.

However, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a parent notified the school district about the issue in November 2023, but nothing was done. Only now, a year later, have the names been removed.

One of the parents whose kid was doxxed, Harvey Vasquez, was running for school board at the time. An organization aligned against him called the New Jersey Public Education Coalition made the Open Public Records Act request in a quest to show that parents weren’t opting their kids out of the sex-ed program.

Last month, Vasquez asked the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the school district violated the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. Vasquez might want to ask again after January 20. The last time parents questioned what was forced on their kids in schools, the current administration called them “domestic terrorists.”

Judge Delays Sentencing in Bogus “Hush Money” Case Against Trump

New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has indefinitely delayed the sentencing of Donald Trump in that bogus Stormy Daniels hush money case that’s destined to be overturned the minute it hits an appeals court. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on November 26.

Trump’s team trumpeted the news.

“This is a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American people who elected him in a landslide,” said communications director Steven Cheung. “The Manhattan DA has conceded that this witch hunt cannot continue. The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all.”

Merchan still has to decide whether to toss the case based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity. Given his daughter’s ties to the Democratic Party and its major players, not to mention the venom and bias Merchan himself showed toward Trump during the trial, his decision Tuesday can’t be seen as a victory yet.

Jonathan Turley argued that with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreeing with the decision to postpone sentencing and vowing to fight any effort to drop the case, the idea seems to be to keep a possible prison sentence hanging over Trump for his entire second term in office.

“This is now the longest performance of Hamlet in history, as Judge Merchan continues to debate whether to be or not to be a sentencing judge in the Trump case,” he posted on X. “‘To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles.'”

White House Christmas Tree a Symbol of Survival After Hurricane Helene

When visitors see the official White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room in the coming weeks, they will not only be seeing a symbol of the season, but a symbol of western North Carolina’s perseverance in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

The Associated Press reports this year’s tree comes from Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm in Avery County, N.C. The farm, run by Sam Cartner, Jr. and his two brothers, had already been selected to provide the White House tree after winning the National Christmas Tree Association’s annual contest. Then came the horrors of Helene.

Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm was slammed by a mudslide which wiped out somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 would-be Christmas trees. Culverts and gullies also were washed away, making access to parts of the farm treacherous. And yet, the 20-foot Fraser fir destined for D.C. and the public eye survived, selected from among other surviving trees by White House staffers in late October once access to the farm was repaired.

The survival story gives this year’s tree special meaning, says Sam Cartner, Jr. “We wanted to really be an uplifting symbol for the other farmers and other people in western North Carolina that have experienced so many losses.”

Cartner says his parents, who started the family farm in 1959, would be proud of the fact that their Christmas tree is representing western North Carolina in this time of hardship for the region.

“They would want this tree to represent the faith, and hope, and love, and joy, and family, and generosity — all those good things of mankind that we need to stop and recognize.”

As the saying goes, we have to take the time to stop and smell the Fraser firs.

Along The Stream

Jason Jones and John Zmirak team up for a powerful and timely essay with “Is the Deep State Intentionally Starting a War to Save Its Criminals’ Skins?”

Zmirak returns at 9 a.m. today to tell us why “Trump’s New Dept. of Justice Must Bankrupt the Deep Church.”