CP's Top 10 News Stories of 2015 (Part 1)
7. Trump dumps on GOP plans to broaden appeal.
Republicans had seemed poised to sweep the 2016 elections. With President Barack Obama's two terms nearly complete, his signature legislation, "Obamacare," is collapsing, the Islamic State is on the rise, and the economy is only sputtering along.
Then along came Donald Trump.
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Since August, the celebrity billionaire has led the race, according to national polls, with numbers ranging from 21 to 41 percent of Republican voters. Trump has held that lead throughout a series of outrageous, offensive and untrue statements. Politifact named Trump's many misstatements its "Lie of the Year," the first time the dishonor essentially went to a person rather than an issue.
The bigger problem for Republicans, however, is Trump's repulsion of non-white voters. His rhetoric about immigrants, Mexicans and blacks has been a turn-off for many. This rhetoric threatens to taint the Republican Party for years to come, and, as the nation becomes increasingly non-white, hurt the Party's chances to win a presidential election.
Republicans would likely lose the 2016 presidential race if Trump is their nominee. In the 36 polls conducted so far on a potential Trump versus Hillary Clinton race, only three show Trump winning. The average has Clinton winning by six percentage points.
There was much debate in 2015 over how much support Trump is getting from Evangelicals. Trump was clearly trying to reach out to Evangelicals on many occasions, and attempted to sow seeds of doubt about rivals Ben Carson and Ted Cruz's Evangelical street cred.
While some polls showed Trump leading among Evangelicals, other evidence indicated that Trump's Evangelical supporters were mostly weak identifiers (non-church-going self-identified Evangelicals), or "prosperity gospel" Evangelicals, who hold views deemed heretical by most orthodox Evangelicals.
Additional reading:
God's Trumpet, Positive Persuader or Narcissistic Blowhard? 3 Theories on the Trump Phenomenon
Analysis: 3 Reasons Trump Can't Win
Donald Trump Thinks Evangelicals Are a Cheap Date; Is He Right?
6. Transgender issues come to the fore.
Bruce Jenner captured the world's attention in April after he confirmed the public's suspicions that after being a father to 10 children, at age 65 he was now going to identify as a woman named Caitlyn, but without getting a complete sex change.
While Caitlyn was capturing headlines, other trans stories were brewing in the country as the Obama administration threatened to pull federal funding from a Chicago-area school that barred a male student (who also identified as female) from having full access to use the girls' locker room and showers unencumbered by dividers. Similarly, residents in Houston, Texas, voted in November on whether to allow men who identify as female to use women's restroom facilities, and vice versa.
While Houstonians defeated the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance with 62 percent voting against the proposition — which critics said would have led to Christian business owners opposed to having men use women's restrooms being fined by the city — members of the school board for District 211 in Palatine, Illinois, voted 5-2 to allow a biologically male transgender student to use the girls' locker room at Township High School.
After the Department of Education's Civil Rights Office gave Township High School 30 days to allow a transgender student use of the girl's locker room or the school would have been at risk of losing nearly $6 million in federal funding, the student was granted access to the locker room to change clothes behind a privacy curtains that blocks girls' from being able to see the student's male genitalia.
In reporting on gender identity confusion, The Christian Post highlighted a 2003 study conducted in Sweden that revealed high rates of suicide attempts among transsexuals who changed their gender through body mutilation or hormone therapy have a higher suicide rate than the general population.
The study, which followed 191 male-to-female gender reassignments and 133 female-to-male gender reassignments from 1973-2003, found that suicide attempts and in-patient psychiatric treatment actually increased in Sweden among those who had a sex change.
