Democratic Travel Bans

There's doubling down on stupid, and then there's this:

Did you hear the latest about the travel ban? No… not the President’s temporary ban on immigration from a number of majority-Muslim nations. I’m talking about New York’s ban on official travel to North Carolina. Governor Cuomo put the ban in place in 2016 in response to the Tar Heel State’s efforts to stop men from using the women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and showers and it’s not yet been repealed. It was initially described as a ban on “official travel” for state employees, but the rule affected more people than state government workers.

The ban also applied to travel by anyone using state funds. This included students at State University of New York (SUNY) campuses. That’s now become a serious issue because a number of members of the swimming and diving teams at SUNY Geneseo qualified for the national championships this year. The problem is that they’re being held in Greensboro, North Carolina. Cuomo initially said that they couldn’t go at all, but recent developments have made the question more complicated. (Democrat and Chronicle)...

These students bust their butts training all year long and competing for a chance like this. Cuomo’s initial instinct was to forbid them from attending entirely. After the inevitable pushback, his “compromise” isn’t all that much better. The teams raised their own money for the travel expenses, but now the Governor is saying that they can only go and spend that money if they stay at a hotel in Virginia, meaning there’s an extra hour of commuting time every day, to and from the event.

Yes, that’s right. Virginia is the state where the top three elected officials are all under fire for either racism (blackface photos) or alleged sexual assault.