"None of their business," says Oklahoma mom
Oklahoma eighth grader James Runnels's mother nearly held him out of his beloved sport of football over what she is calling government overreach and "none of their business," referring to the state's new "Save Women's Sports Act," that which requires a "biological sex affidavit" from student athletes.

J.D. Runnels, James's father, said he managed to convince the middle schooler's mother to let their son play. He also said he'd personally learned more about gender identities when he taught and coached at Moore West Middle School.

"It's such a different conversation than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago," he said. "Those were things that we didn't deal with."

"I went into it [that], 'boys are boys, girls are girls,'" he went on. "'This is this, that is that, and this is how it is.' It's not like that.... It's a very, very layered issue."

State Rep. Mauree Turner, who became the first openly nonbinary Nonbinary state lawmaker in 2020, described the law as dangerous. "These laws don't just damage once they are signed by the governor;, they do damage when they are written, when the public knows that there is someone who is in a place of power that is coming for them, and not in a good way," they said. "The policy becomes law and tells our children, tells the future of Oklahoma, how we feel about them."

Loud GOP frontrunner clams up, crosses fingers
The God-toting, far-right conservative Andy Ogles was loud and proud during the nine-way primary race for Tennessee's 5th Congressional District. He vowed to "get back to honoring God and country, and declared, "Liberals, we're coming for you." But he's been quiet ever since, and his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Heidi Campbell, has been calling him out for it.

Campbell posted a video of Ogles at a June GOP candidate forum, in which he said that the "next thing we have to do is go after Gay marriage" with a states' rights approach. She has also accused him of refusing invitations to debates.

"Voters deserve a public debate from candidates who run for Congress," Campbell wrote in a statement. "Families deserve to hear why he wants to defund public schools, ban abortion nationwide, and increase prescription drug costs on seniors. I guess if I had to defend his ugly record, I'd be hiding, too."

Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, described Ogles's strategy as fairly standard for Tennessee Republicans: "Don't let anyone get your right in the Republican primary; win that, and that's all that matters." He went on, "What Ogles is doing is basically trying to run out the clock on the election without making a mistake."