By Ben Johnson

As the nation reacts to the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and looks forward to how the incoming Trump-Vance administration will shape up, numerous other important stories have slipped under the media’s radar.

On the eve of the 2024 election, the United Nations issued a report suggesting anything the U.N. deems “anti-LGBT rhetoric” — from political candidates and religious believers — be considered “hate speech” and to present LGBT-identifying people “as role models.” A Democratic campaign in the nation’s most significant swing state has sued to count the votes of unregistered voters. And late-term abortion facilities are worried that the 2024 election means they will soon have to close their doors.

1. Foreign Election Interference? U.N. Slams Politicians For ‘Hate Speech’ and ‘Gender Persecution’ on Eve of Election, Threatens Religious Liberty

The Biden administration praised a United Nations report dedicated to portraying the mainstream view of transgenderism as “hate speech” and encouraging social media platforms to silence politicians, and Christian believers, who espouse traditional Christian views of gender. It also asked for election observers dedicated to LGBTQ issues to patrol polling places.

“The human rights related to the electoral participation of LGBT persons may be violated in myriad ways,” including “bias-motivated … hate speech,” says the report.

“Intolerant rhetoric, based on animosity, fear-mongering and hate speech, may be directed at different targets … LGBT persons may be targeted specifically in campaign rhetoric, or hostility may be expressed in more general xenophobic terms,” says the report. “Discrimination and hostility are exacerbated when an LGBT individual is additionally targeted on the basis of other characteristics, such as race or religious beliefs, or as a migrant.”

President-elect Donald Trump leaned hard into advertisements showing that Kamala Harris supported taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants. As a presidential hopeful in 2019, then-Senator Harris boasted that she changed the law to offer taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries to prison inmates when she was California attorney general. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly warned the Harris-Walz campaign of their vulnerability on the issue, and the Democratic polling firm Blueprint found no issue so motivated swing state voters as the notion that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” Other candidates picked up the theme, and “Republicans spent $143 million on the transgender campaign to cast Democrats as out-of-touch” in the 2024 election, reported “60 Minutes.”

The U.N. objects when voters democratically make their voices heard on extremist transgender proposals via ballot initiatives. “Referendums, often with provocative or misleading questions, are one mechanism used to radicalize political discourse, or to distract voters from other pressing issues,” it says.

The U.N. seeks to portray all discussion of extreme transgenderism as beyond discussion. It describes even the use of “the term ‘gender ideology’ as ‘part of an anti-rights discourse by political and religious leaders seeking to limit the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender-diverse persons.’” The term “‘gender ideology’ has emerged as a dominant catch-all phrase that falsely implies a sinister attempt to undermine the social order by tampering with gender norms. It is used to oppose reproductive rights and the rights of LGBT people,” claims the report.

The U.N. calls on governments and social media companies to crack down on religious objections to radical LGBTQIA+ ideology. “In one submission, it was noted how anti-LGBT rhetoric was sometimes positioned as religious speech protected by freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Profiling LGBT issues in campaigns, in order to generate a negative response and enhance political prospects, is often planned and purposeful.”

Among its 19 recommendations, the report calls on governments to:

• “Promote the development and refinement of social media company policies on anti-discrimination”
• “highlight the participation of LGBT persons in politics and to increase their perception as role models”
• “educate the public on gender and sexual diversity and the human rights of LGBT persons”
• Engage in “the proactive, prompt and efficient investigation and prosecution of hate crimes”
• “Repeal laws against consensual same-sex conduct and review disenfranchisement based on criminal convictions”
• “Adopt laws to guarantee legal recognition of gender identity on the basis of self-declaration”
• “Develop guidelines and procedures for election day that promote the participation of LGBT persons, especially trans and non-binary persons”
• “Support the capacity-building of civil society organizations focused on LGBT rights in election observation and advocacy”
• “Support the capacity-building of international election observers on LGBT rights issues”
• See “LGBT persons as a key component of international electoral assistance”

These proposals would at least smear all faith-based objections to extreme LGBTQ ideology as a form of hate speech. At worst, they would suppress the traditional, biblical doctrines of sexuality and gender held by nearly all the world’s Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The report — titled “Electoral participation and protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” and written by U.N. Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Graeme Reed — came out on July 15. Yet C-FAM noted that the United Nations insisted on addressing the issue on Monday, November 4, the day before the U.S. presidential election. How did the U.S. administration greet it?

“Your report is very timely, as it comes during the so-called global ‘year of elections’ including in my own country tomorrow,” said Dylan Lang, a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. “Sadly, the United States is not immune from homophobia and transphobia in election campaigns.” He also noted the administration’s record of appointing “[p]eople like Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the first out Senate-confirmed Cabinet Secretary; Karine Jean-Pierre, the first openly queer White House Press Secretary; and Admiral Rachel Levine and Shawn Skelly, the highest-ranking openly transgender government officials in United States history.”

The timing seems anything but coincidental. Does this constitute foreign election interference?

2. Bob Casey’s Election Denial Would Count Ineligible Voters?

Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who has devolved from a “pro-life Democrat” to just another pro-abortion liberal, lost his reelection campaign to Republican Dave McCormick this year. While the election’s razor-thin margin triggers an automatic recount under Pennsylvania law, it is unlikely to change the state of the race. In some cases, McCormick has actually gained votes. But not winning a majority of legal votes seems to be no reason for Casey to relinquish his vice-grip on power.

As of this writing, Casey — who regularly chided President Trump to accept the outcome of an election in advance — has not only refused to concede; he’s waging a legal battle to count the “votes” of unregistered voters. Several election boards in the state have voted to count mail-in ballots that have no date, in violation of state law and a recent state Supreme Court ruling. That’s not enough for the Casey campaign, which is fighting a court battle against the Republican National Committee to count the “votes” of unregistered voters, unsigned ballots, and those who do not live in the county in which they voted.

The Casey for Senate campaign sent a letter to one board declaring that it “challenges the rejection of provisional ballots based solely on the Board’s staff’s failure to find voters’ names on registered-voter lists.” This is apparently what the Left means when it claims it seeks to defend “Our Democracy.”

“Casey and the Democrats are sore losers. And they’re disrespecting our democracy,” says a 30-second ad crafted by the Fair Election Fund. “Tell Bob Casey it’s time to concede.”

3. University Turns on Democratic Rep, Then Flip-Flops

As online videos of blue-haired TikTok users show, Democrats are not handling the results of the 2024 election well. But some on the Left have at least the good sense not to let their convictions get in the way of receiving vast tranches of taxpayer dollars.

Tufts University threatened to cut all ties with the office of Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) after he dared to question whether the Democratic Party had gone too far in embracing extreme transgender ideology during the 2024 election.

After the results came in, Moulton — who briefly ran as a presidential hopeful in the 2020 Democratic primaries — committed what a U.N. observer might deem “hate speech”: He affirmed biological differences between men and women. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” said Moulton.

Tufts University decided not to wait for guidance from the U.N. It cut ties with Moulton’s office within 24 hours. “David Art, a Tufts professor who chairs the political science department, then called Moulton’s office Friday and threatened to block student internships” for students to work in Moulton’s office for credit, “according to internal Slack messages Moulton’s office shared with NBC News,” the outlet noted.

But backlash came swiftly, with calls to tax university endowments or take other legal measures against liberal universities. “We have reached out to Congressman Moulton’s office to clarify that we have not — and will not — limit internship opportunities with his office,” announced the university in a social media post on Tuesday.

“Imagine if one of these Tuft students actually wants to intern in a Republican office!” said Moulton.

4. Abortion Facilities Freak Out, Fear Going Out of Business

Among the constituencies that views itself as hardest hit by the 2024 presidential election is the abortion industry, especially those who carry out late-term abortions. But a fascinating, pre-election article in a liberal news outlet shows independent abortion facilities face their greatest economic squeeze, not from the incoming Trump administration, but from competitors in the abortion industry.

Shortly before the election, The New Republic carried an abortion industry fundraising letter posing as a news story warning that, even if Kamala Harris won the presidency, some abortionists who carry out third-trimester abortions may have to close their doors. Try to suppress your tears as you read:

“There are thought to be seven all-trimester clinics in the entire country. DuPont Clinic, an all-trimester provider in Washington, D.C., said it has lost more than $500,000 since July 1 after national groups put strict caps on patient funding. Karishma Oza, DuPont’s director of care coordination, said if that rate of loss continues and they don’t get support to close the funding gap, the clinic will have to close by the end of the year.

”‘Even though technically the clinic is a for-profit, we were never profitable,’ Oza said of the clinic, which opened in 2017. ‘But now with these cuts, we are going from pay period to pay period.’“ 

The story reveals what’s actually at play: a long-running turf war inside the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood has long sought to expand its abortion franchise locations, often in the same neighborhoods as non-affiliated abortion facilities.

"These clinics’ financial devastation is an upstream consequence of the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood capping patient funding at 30 percent of their bill instead of 50 percent,” notes the story. The story hopes to keep these abortionists in business at your expense. One of the late-term abortionists — Dr. Diane Horvath of Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland — “expressed optimism that Maryland lawmakers could increase the amount Medicaid health insurance reimburses providers for abortion.”

The Trump administration should move swiftly to defund all abortionists, including Planned Parenthood. To use the abortion industry’s logic: Taxpayers have no responsibility to carry abortionists before the point of financial viability.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.