* Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski announced his running mate today. Her name is Carrie Mendoza, an emergency medicine physician and activist. Oddly, Mendoza didn’t speak at today’s announcement (even though Dabrowski’s mother did) and neither candidate took questions from the media. As I write this, no press release has been issued. So, we’re kinda flying blind and we decided to put together a quick look at her background.

…Adding… We just received the release. Only a brief mention of his running mate…

Joining Ted Dabrowski on the ticket is Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a 25-year ER physician, mom of three, and longtime advocate for the quality of care of patients and against the political corruption of healthcare.

* Like her husband Myles Mendoza (who helped pass the state’s now-defunct tuition tax credit program when he ran Empower Illinois), Carrie Mendoza is a school vouchers advocate.

Dabrowski and Ms. Mendoza spoke at an event this past spring sponsored by the Liberty Justice Center: “Legal landscape of trans-related issues in schools and society: Liberty Justice Center talks to a full house at Mallinckrodt”

* From Wikipedia…

FAIR in Medicine program is led by Carrie Mendoza, an advisor to Genspect and Detrans help. It attempts to distinguish “talk therapy” from other forms of conversion therapy and has opposed a Department of Homeland Security nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity.[32] FAIR made comments to the Department of Education opposing Title IX nondiscrimination protections for transgender students.[32]

FAIR in Medicine’s website is here.

* The Record Community News Group…

A novel that has been on New Trier High School’s reading list for six years drew the aim of a subset of district parents on Monday, June 7, during the monthly board of education meeting. […]

Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a Glencoe resident and New Trier Neighbors board member, was one of four speakers who referred to one scene in the book as “soft porn” and claimed it was not appropriate for the sophomore class.

* NBC News…

J.P. Leider, a University of Minnesota health policy researcher who oversaw the state’s tool to help Covid patients determine if they qualified for treatment, said that political groups may succeed in halting race-conscious policies, “but that doesn’t mean that those disparities don’t exist.”

“They’re very real, and they’re very measurable,” he said of health inequities.

Some medical professionals have pushed back on the utility of race-conscious policies in health care, saying they can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.

“I would want to teach the trainees to look at each patient as an individual, and what their unique identity is, and the unique situation going on with them,” said Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a Chicago-based physician who leads the medicine chapter for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, an advocacy group formed last year to oppose “woke ideology.” “Not lumping them into a group — that’s kind of dehumanizing.”

* More from Isabel…

* Carrie Mendoza | ER doctor: Next COVID-19 fight is to flatten the bureaucracy: So, what needs to happen to ensure we are never caught off guard like this again? It’s simple: Flatten the bureaucracy. The term “flatten the curve” has become the new national mantra on containing the spread of coronavirus. On the health care front lines, it would make sense to flatten the bureaucracy. Modern health care has developed into a giant bureaucracy filled with nonclinical people often out of touch with clinicians and patients. Those on the front lines know the bureaucracy of medicine has gotten in the way of the sacred doctor-patient relationship. During this crisis, managers and algorithms can’t save people. Medical professionals can. Commonsense operational changes physicians have wanted for years are finally being implemented.

* Transgender Map | Carrie D. Mendoza vs. transgender people: In an introductory video, Mendoza likened the “orthodoxy” of gender affirming care to forced sterilizations in Nazi Germany and Iran. […] Mendoza also drafted and distributed an open letter supporting Kenneth Zucker for publishing yet another ethically questionable article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior about “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” Mendoza also had study co-author J. Michael Bailey on to defend the article and Zucker. The paper was later retracted.

* Illinois Families for Public Schools | Dark money orgs on the ground in school board races in Illinois: FAIR’s Illinois chapter coordinator Carrie Mendoza is the wife of Myles Mendoza, former president of Empower Illinois, the group that led the effort to create Illinois’ voucher program (and currently benefits from administering the program as a voucher middleman org that skims millions off the top of the voucher funds they distribute). The former Illinois lobbyist for Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children (see below) Nate Hoffman is a member of FAIR’s board of advisors. They have attacked Evanston D65 on issues of race and gender as well as New Trier D203. They attended Evanston High School D202 events in the fall of 2021 to disrupt affinity group activities for parents.

* Southern Poverty Law Center | Group dynamics and division of labor within the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network: The group’s FAIR in Medicine program is led by Dr. Carrie Mendoza, who serves as an adviser to Genspect and Detrans Help – an organization that promotes therapists, doctors and detransitioners who are willing to testify before legislators and lawmakers against affirming care.[82] FAIR in Medicine also manages a “Gender Healthcare Policy Map” and attempts to distinguish “talk therapy” for transgender people from other forms of conversion therapy. Like SEGM, the group opposed a DHS nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity. FAIR, like Do No Harm, was founded to largely oppose anti-racist pedagogies in American education, and its members claim that therapists are trained to tell white patients that they are “oppressors.”[83] It has since become a key voice amplifying anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience.

* NPR Nevada | As some states ban gender-affirming care, Nevadans work to protect it: Mendoza pointed out the fact that there are trans individuals who go through gender-affirming care and later decide to de-transition. “They were feeling optimistic and good through a pathway, and when they got to the end of the pathway, which was surgery for a lot of them, they reflected, ‘Well, this actually didn’t fix some of my problems,’” Mendoza said. “I’m open minded. I want all these kids to do well, but I want to make sure that we aren’t irreparably harming them; causing sterility, or causing worse mental health issues later.”