In the Biden years, National “Public” Radio acted as a supine publicist for leftists with strong opinions on gender — starting with HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel [Richard] Levine.
On Friday on their “Goats and Soda” blog, NPR global health correspondent Jonathan Lambert was putting out the warning siren on the new head of the HHS Office of Global Affairs with this headline:
America’s new top health diplomat has strong opinions on abortion and gender
Levine also had “strong opinions” on abortion and gender from the other direction, but NPR agreed with those. In 2022, they let Levine claim “I’m not political….I’m a physician” while he claimed conservatives were driving trans kids to suicide. The story began:
America’s new top health diplomat is Bethany Kozma….
Kozma has a record of public statements and activism on health issues, equating abortion with “murder” and campaigning against gender-affirming care.
The bias is evident in what gets scare quotes – abortion apparently isn’t “murder” (you “access abortion care”) and mutilating your genitals is “gender-affirming care.”
Unlike the Bidenites, Kozma didn’t have any comment for “public” radio activists. “Kozma declined to be interviewed for this story. She doesn’t appear to have a background in global health based on publicly available information online.”
But Kozma is disturbingly conservative:
In a 2016 commentary for The Daily Signal, a conservative news website founded by the Heritage Foundation, she argued against the Obama administration’s guidance that public schools should allow children to use the bathroom that comports with their identity.
“This radical agenda of subjective ‘gender fluidity’ and unrestricted shower and bathroom access actually endangers all,” she stated, noting that “predators” could abuse the policy.
The Democrats wanted her removed from the last Trump administration:
In 2017, she joined the Trump administration as senior adviser for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in the United States Agency for International Development, eventually being promoted to deputy chief of staff. In videos obtained and released by [leftist media group] ProPublica, Kozma recalls calling the U.S. a “pro-life” country in a closed-door U.N. meeting about women’s rights in 2018, when access to abortion was still protected nationally by Roe v. Wade.“
In August 2020, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and four other Democratic senators issued a letter labeling Kozma and several other political appointees at USAID as “prejudiced” and called for them to be removed from their posts. Kozma has “spoken extensively and derisively of trans people and trans issues,” the senators wrote.
The Lambert story did include supportive quotes from HHS and from first-term HHS executive Roger Severino. But the Left – described without ideological labels – can’t stand her:
Some reproductive rights advocates believe Kozma will use her new position to insert anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ policies into these agreements.
“[Kozma] is vehemently anti-trans, anti-LGBTQI+, anti-abortion,” says Keifer Buckingham, managing director at the Council on Global Equality, a coalition of advocacy organizations that focuses on LGBTQ issues. “For those of us who want to ensure that the provision of U.S. foreign assistance and health doesn’t discriminate against people based on who they are, [Kozma’s appointment] raises a lot of red flags.”
Poor Keifer! In other words, to conservatives, Kozma sounds terrific. But this kind of “news” reporting underlines why conservatives wanted NPR to lose its taxpayer subsidies.
