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Kamala Harris isn’t savvy. She does well when she’s been prepped within inches of her life, as she was before the recent presidential debate; and she comes across as sharp and relevant if you put her side by side with Donald “Those Dirty Haitians Stole My Pants” Trump.

But on her own, she’s about as brilliant as the emergency understudy who gets called in to play Evita 10 minutes before the curtains open. She gets points for showing up and trying, but the actual performance is pretty feeble.

But she is hitting one point directly on the nose: She’s identified the power of Catholic self-loathing.

Catholics are swing voters, and swing voters are powerful and unpredictable. A slim majority of Catholics favor Trump, but it’s close enough to reveal a massive division in the ranks. So you’d think Harris would be treading carefully so as not to alienate that precious margin of undecided Catholics, and trying to bolster the 47 percent who do like her.

Instead, she’s breaking tradition and snubbing the Al Smith Dinner, an annual historical event, named for the first Catholic to run for president, that raises thousands of dollars for charity.

This isn’t an aberration. She’s unabashedly pro-abortion, recklessly spreading misinformation about who really caused the death of Amber Thurman (who died because of unsafe abortion pills and criminally incompetent healthcare, not from any abortion ban). Even Catholic leftists would be hard-pressed to find anything compatible with Catholic social teaching in her campaign. She and Biden were just as hard on migrants as Trump was; and her party recently quit opposing capital punishment. And she certainly hasn’t done anything to walk back her recent history of lashing out against Catholics. In 2019, then-Sen. Harris called out judicial nominee Brian Buescher for the high crime of having joined the Knight of Columbus as a teen, implying that simply to be a Christian in public makes one unfit for public office.

But at the debate with Trump, she tried talking directly to Catholics like me.  She said:

“[O]ne does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

At first, I was so irritated. Who is this woman telling me how to manage my conscience?

But there’s a kind of brilliance to her arrogance. Even if her campaign doesn’t understand why a person of faith would recoil from unrestricted abortion, it sure can tell we see through Trump. We know he was never pro-life and never will be. They see how we loathe the way he and his party treat women and the vulnerable. And they know there’s a very fine line between disgust for someone else and disgust for oneself. Both can be powerful motivators.

I’m a registered Republican, an ardently pro-life, faithful Catholic never-Trumper who keeps walking into the voting booth with one firm idea: Trump is the most dangerous candidate, because of his words and his behavior, and because of his awful power to encourage Americans to debase themselves. So I held my nose and voted for Hillary, and then for Biden, because I wanted to stop Trump, period. I don’t know how I’ll vote this year, but it won’t be for Trump.

But I can still recall my growing horror as more and more of my fellow Catholics did fall in with him, and started professing real love for him and his appalling ideas. I was baffled, angry, and ashamed. We should know better. I still feel I should have somehow done more to stop him and make at least my fellow Catholics see who he really is.

So when Kamala does stuff like skipping the Al Smith Dinner, maybe she’s doing it because she’s anti-Catholic. But more likely, she’s doing it because she knows burnt-out Catholics don’t care about stuff like that anymore. They don’t see themselves as part of the old guard American Catholic voting bloc. They can’t even go in the church basement and eat donuts after Mass anymore, because fellowship hour is just a bunch of dudes yuking it up over BBQ cat memes and Willie Brown jokes.

If Trump invites Americans to debase themselves, Kamala invites Catholics to lean into their self-loathing. Be ashamed to stand up for what their faith teaches, be ashamed of their fellow Catholics who threw in with Trump, and most of all, be ashamed of yourselves. Here, crawl in under the dubious shelter of this vote for Kamala, you poor sap.

She smells that misery in the air, and she knows that people are desperate for some relief. She doesn’t have to appeal to Catholics. She doesn’t even have to stop disliking Catholics. All she has to do is not be Trump. She’s counting on people being too exhausted to hope for more.

A former Exeter High School student disciplined after he was falsely accused of using the wrong pronouns lost his lawsuit even though school officials lied on the stand, a judge ruled on Monday.

Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman quoted the band Buffalo Springfield (“There’s battle lines being drawn; Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”) and the movie “Casablanca” in his 18-page ruling that blasts school officials for their dishonest testimony.

Exeter High School Assistant Principal Marcy Dovholuk and Football Coach William Ball both testified during last year’s bench trial that the boy was suspended from the football team because he used supposedly inappropriate language like “bozo” and “STFU” in a text conversation and not because he allegedly misgendered another student. 

“The school officials’ purported shock at plaintiff’s use of the terms ‘bozo’ and ‘stfu’ has all the believability of Captain Renault’s famous exclamation of shock in Casablanca. Context is everything,” Schulman wrote.

But the student still lost his case because New Hampshire law does not allow public institutions like schools to be held accountable for violating civil rights unless there are at least monetary damages, according to Schulman’s ruling.

“Because New Hampshire law does not recognize a private cause of action for a political subdivision’s violation of a plaintiff’s State Constitutional rights in the absence of bodily injury, property damage, personal injury or statute, the court grants judgment to the defendants,” Schulman wrote.

Attorney Richard Lehmann, who represents the student and his mother, called Schulman’s ruling a partial victory because the judge found the facts favor his client, even if the law does not.

“My clients won this case on everything but the law. The court believed their testimony and did not believe the testimony of school officials when they said that they did not take any action against my client because he expressed his beliefs,” Lehmann told NHJournal.

The boy, who has since transferred to another school, is referred to as MP in the lawsuit to protect his identity. MP and his mother were seeking $1 in nominal damages from the school for violating his free speech and religious rights. The student’s belief in only two genders is informed by science and his Catholic faith. 

Christian advocacy organization, Cornerstone, backed  MP’s lawsuit, and plans to back his appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

“Cornerstone and its attorneys look forward to appealing this decision to the New Hampshire Supreme Court—which will be bound by the trial court’s findings of fact—and to securing a ruling that will protect free speech and religious liberty for all Granite State students,” said Cornerstone’s Executive Director Shannon McGinley.

MP’s beliefs became a problem in September 2021 when he was a freshman and a member of the high school football team. While talking to friends after school on a bus, MP expressed his belief there are only two genders, according to the fact Schulman recites in his ruling. Another student, referred to as AG, took offense to that comment even though she was not part of the conversation and the comment was not directed at her, according to the ruling.

“AG formed the opinion that [MP] had the subjective  belief that there are only two genders. In fact, that is exactly what [MP] believed. He follows what he represents  to be the Catholic religious doctrine that God created human beings as male or female,” Schulman wrote. “AG believed differently and she took it upon herself to correct [MP] by saying in a loud and somewhat aggressive tone of voice that there are more than two genders.”

MP disagreed and said he believed there are openly two genders, and the conversation on the bus ended there. However, AG did not want to let it go and got MP’s cell phone number. She then restarted the argument via text later that evening, according to the ruling. 

“How are you in high school and don’t know the difference between sex and gender? Give a valid reason why ‘there’s only 2 genders,’” AG demanded via text.

AG was seeking a fight when she sent the text unprompted, and continued to argue with MP into the night, according to Schulman.

“The court pauses to consider the import of AG’s text: She intruded upon the plaintiff’s private life by sending an  uninvited and borderline hostile text to him directly. She asked a question, thereby inviting a response. She had no reason to expect that the response would be an apology indicative of cheerful agreement with her point of view. The tenor of her text did not suggest a desire for an open exchange of views. At best AG was proselytizing; at worst she was berating,” Schulman wrote.

Throughout the following text discussion, MP seems to want to end the conversation without backing down from his views, while AG continued to push her views. During the argument AG condescended to MP for his “ignorance” on gender. For his part, MP seemed to want to end the argument.

“Just STFU and leave me alone. U brought this up knowing ur wrong bozo. So grow up and maybe then you’ll realize that there are only 2 genders and sexes,” MP wrote.

But AG would not let the matter go, according to the ruling. The next day she sent an email to Ball that made false accusations MP engaged in “extreme ” transphobic bullying, according to Schulman. Neither Ball nor any other school official bothered to investigate AG’s accusations before they took action against MP, according to Schulman. Based on testimony and evidence presented at the trial, Schulman found no evidence MP engaged in any transphobic bullying.

Dovholuk and Ball decided to punish MP for his alleged transphobia, but in a way that left no paper record, according to Schulman. Instead of a formal write-up, Ball was authorized to suspend MP from the football team for up to a week.

On the witness stand, both Ball and Dovholuk claimed the punishment was for using the disrespectful terms “bozo” and “STFU,” and not for stating he believes there are two genders.

“The court does not believe the school witnesses on this point. The school witnesses are honorable people in an honorable profession, but, in the court’s view, they were dishonest about their motivations,” Schulman wrote.

Neither Ball nor Dovholuk responded to a request for comment. SAU 16 Superintendent Esther Asbell is out of the office until July 30. School Board Chair Bill Gauthier declined to comment Monday, saying he had yet to read the ruling.

Exeter High School Athletic District Bill Ball said the school respects all students.

But the attorney for an Exeter student who was punished for expressing his opinions about gender said the school needs to respect the rule of law.

During the bench trial in Rockingham Superior Court, Ball and Assistant Exeter High School Principal Marcy Dovholuk explained why they punished a Catholic student for what was a private text sent outside of school.

The football coach benched the freshman student for one game in 2021 over a discussion he had with a classmate. He is seeking $1 in damages. He also wants Ball to admit wrongdoing. The student insists he was punished for defending his view that there are only two genders, male and female.

His attorney, Richard Lehmann, told NHJournal Exeter is another example of New Hampshire school districts running roughshod over anyone who disagrees with the new, extreme gender mores.

“It’s bad enough that children are made to feel uncomfortable expressing traditional views on matters related to gender in school,” Lehmann said. “Or when schools announce they will lie to parents about their children’s in-school gender expression, as Manchester, Exeter, and other schools do. But it’s made even worse when schools reach beyond their gates and into children’s private lives and seek to control their behavior at home or in private communications with other kids that happen entirely outside of any context related to the school,” Lehmann said.

Lehamann’s client, John Doe, is using a pseudonym to protect his identity. He has since left Exeter and is enrolled at a Catholic high school. Doe testified he was talking with friends on a bus after school about another student who claimed to be “non-binary” during Spanish class. Doe testified he thought that odd since the Spanish language relies on feminine and masculine genders.

The non-binary student was not involved or aware, of the conversation at the time.

Instead, a female classmate who was not part of the conversation later confronted Doe, insisting that humans come in more than two genders. Doe and this female student then got into a heated conversation, with Doe arguing the mainstream stance that there are two sexes. Doe based this view on both science and his religious beliefs.

The girl texted him later that evening to continue the argument. At one point, Doe told the girl to “STFU,” which he testified was an attempt to be funny.

The next day, Doe was called in by Dovholuk and informed he would be punished for the conversation he had the night before over text. Dovholuk claimed the punishment was for bullying and bad language and not Doe’s beliefs regarding gender.

“At Exeter, we respect people, and we respect how they identify,” Dovholuk reportedly said.

Ball testified he told Doe, “We respect all.”

Lehmann said the United States Supreme Court already ruled that schools cannot punish students for things they say off campus. In June 2021, the High Court ruled against a Pennsylvania high school that suspended cheerleader Brandi Levy for using the f-word in a social media video about the cheer team.

“Three months before the facts of this case arose, the United States Supreme Court dismissed an athletic sanction imposed by a coach because the authority of the athletic department to penalize students for engaging in free speech could only extend to off-campus, non-school activities in rare circumstances,” Lehmann said.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that school districts cannot police students’ speech when they are not in school.

“From the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off-campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day. That means courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regulate off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot engage in that kind of speech at all,” the justices wrote.

The Doe case is now being considered by Judge Andrew Schulman, who is expected to render a verdict in the coming weeks. Doe is doing well at his new school, Lehmann said.

“He is a great kid from a terrific family, and Exeter High School is a lesser place because of his absence.”