What is Right Wing Media Saying about the Silencing of Zooey Zephyr?
As Montanans rise up in protest over a transgender lawmaker being denied the right to speak in the legislature, the right wing struggles to find their spin.
by Evan Urquhart
State Representative Zooey Zephyr, the first and only transgender legislator in Montana, has been silenced for days after an informal decision to refuse to recognize her originally made by House speaker Matt Regier, and supported by other Republican lawmakers. The silencing occurred after Zephyr spoke passionately against a bill to ban gender-affirming care for youth, using the phrase “blood on your hands” which her Republican colleagues objected to as a breach of decorum.
The reaction to Zephyr’s silencing has been an outpouring of support for her right to address the legislature and outrage at the Republicans who are refusing to recognize her without having undertaken any formal censure process. Protestors massed at the capital to support Zephyr yesterday, then proceeded to disrupt the legislative session when the speaker again refused to recognize her. Chants of “Let her speak” drowned out attempts to conduct business as usual until police in riot gear were brought in to shut the protest down, forcibly removing protesters and making several arrests.
Right wing media’s coverage of the outpouring of support for Zephyr has been muted and confused. Multiple right-wing outlets including Fox News, the Daily Caller, and the New York Post, have claimed, falsely, that Zephyr was censured by the House. While Republicans have called for her censure, no censure has occurred. The Daily Caller attributed the claim that Zephyr was censured to an article on YourBigSky.com which correctly characterized the lawmaker as having been silenced, but not censured, by House leadership.
screenshot from the Daily Caller
In addition to some outlets lying outright about whether Zephyr had been censured, all account in the right wing press have attempted to portray the protests as violent, but they’ve been forced to write around the awkward fact that the only violence that occurred was police violence to shut the protests down. Many articles have drawn attention to the use of “riot police” and remarks by the GOP leadership condemning violence and referring to nonviolent protesters as “far-left agitators.” A typical example, from the New York Post:
screenshot from the New York Post
It turns out it’s very difficult to make nonviolent protestors rallying behind a lawmaker who has been silenced for being passionate in her defense of transgender rights sound out-of-line. Zooey Zephyr was duly elected and sent to the legislature to speak on behalf of her constituents, and it’s hard to portray the statement that lawmakers acting to ban evidence-based medical treatments have blood on their hands as deserving extraordinary measures from the GOP-controlled House. Conservative media are trying, but it’s simply not a story that makes their side look good.