cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8563700

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/51268

Nika Bartoo-Smith
Underscore Native News + ICT

PORTLAND, Ore. – Around 300 high school students dressed in gowns, costumes and elaborate makeup danced until their feet hurt to music from DJ Aspen blaring through the speakers, their smiles and laughter filling the air at this year’s annual Queer Prom.

The Native American Youth and Family Center’s Two-Spirit program has hosted the event for four years since taking a hiatus during the pandemic.

“My ultimate goal with this is creating a space for queer youth, especially Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ+ youth, to be unabashedly themselves, to truly not have to worry about the way that they’re being perceived, but just be able to celebrate themselves, celebrate each other, and to showcase the fact that we’ve always been here — Indigenous, trans, queer, we’ve always been here. We’re not going anywhere,” said Kiara Wehrenberg, Tlingit and the Two-Spirit program coordinator at the center. Wehrenberg coordinates Queer Prom.

As prom season is well underway, Queer Prom is a space built for students from all backgrounds to have a space centering joy, in Portland.

“Queer Prom is so unique and so special,” said this year’s emcee, Dr. Poison Waters, an iconic Portland drag queen. “There are people in this country that wish they could come to a Queer Prom.”

Planning Queer Prom

Wehrenberg worked with youth from the center’s Two-Spirit program to find a theme and organize a prom built for them. The group made pamphlets for a swag table during the May 15 event, that offered a resource guide, information about the term Two Spirit and a list of Two-Spirit powwows across the country

This year’s prom theme was “Superheroes vs. Villains Edition” and students showed out in all kinds of costumes. From Captain America and the Joker to fantasy inspired looks include elf ears and elaborate makeup. The theme extended beyond dress as projected graphics all around the room feature comic book inspired illustrations.

Food, catered by Brittinie Love and her company Cooking with B. Love, took the superheroes versus villains theme to the next level. The menu featured items such as “Gotham Fire Beef Skewers” and “The Green Goblin Spring Rolls” with mocktails like “Radiant Recharge” and “Arctic Blast.”

Planning for Queer Prom began as soon as last year’s ended, according to Wehrenberg. This began with reaching out to vendors and event venues, such as AVENUE Portland, where this year’s prom took place.

“I think Queer Prom is just a beautiful place for connection,” said Marvin Colbow, whose drag name is Marvin Killboy, a senior at Benson Polytechnic High School. “I just went to my own prom, and I did not feel the same amount of connectivity that I feel here with my fellow transgender and queer people.”

Wehrenberg reached out to Queer-Straight Alliances and Indigenous Student Unions across Portland and beyond to open up the event to youth across the city, beyond youth at the center’s Many Nations Academy.

“Queer specific spaces are necessary across the board,” said Ellen Whatmore, a teacher at Franklin High School and the school’s co-advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance. “Having an opportunity to shine and be in the spotlight and be celebrated is unparalleled.”

Whatmore attended Queer Prom dressed in a Medusa-inspired look, as an event volunteer and also helped advertise the event to Franklin students after receiving an email invitation from Wehrenberg.

Guest Appearances

A few hours into the dance, students were interrupted from tearing up the dance floor when Dr. Poison Waters invited two other drag performers from Darcelle’s XV out onto the dance floor.

Dressed in a big, blonde wig with hot pink heeled boots and a matching hot pink ruffled robe, T’Kara Campbell Star made her way onto the dance floor. As “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus filled the speakers, she shed her robe to reveal a bright green body suit and matching sun hat decked out in fake flowers. Her performance was met with cheers as students formed a half circle around her. At the end of three songs, T’Kara Campbell Star invited a student dressed as Maleficent to the center of the floor to dance with her.

Following her performance, Ilani E. Nova made her way onto the dance floor, decked out with a black feather boa, thigh high leather boots and a black and tan body suit. She danced with the students, lip syncing to a compilation of Abba classics.

And of course, Dr. Poison Waters herself also performed, moving from stage to the middle of the dance floor.

As the night wore on, the dance floor remained full as laughter and song sing-alongs drifted through the air, mixed with the beats spun by DJ Aspen.

“I just see so much queer joy in our youth and I’m so happy and honored to be a part of this,” said Mitch Saffle, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a chaperone at Queer Prom and a data and evaluation support specialist at the center. “I’m so grateful to see that a space like this exists for our youth. Not only our queer youth, but our Indigenous queer youth.”

Later on in the evening, Yin Glossier, Dior Glossier and Deity 007 from PDX Ballroom brought vogue to the dance floor as students sat in a circle around the three performers, completely engaged.

Following their own performance, Yin Glossier explained a bit about the ball scene which started in Harlem in the 1920s, expanding in the 1970s and 1980s, when Black and Brown drag queens were not allowed to be at White drag queen pageants.

“So, as Black and Brown people do, we make our own shit,” Yin Glossier said. “In that, we have the birth of ballroom.”

They then explained some of the main categories that “Houses” of the ball scene compete in: fashion, body, sex appeal, face, vogue.

Students were then invited to compete in ballroom style, lining up to compete for “best dressed.” A hard decision on the part of the judges, composed of performers from Darcelle’s XV and PDX Ballroom. Ultimately a student dressed in a Master Shake, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, costume took home the prize: a pair of rainbow beaded earrings donated by the center’s Two-Spirit program.

For Wehrenberg, Saffle, volunteers and students an event like Queer Prom is so crucial for the community.

“Being able to have a space like this is really important because it provides an opportunity for us to come together in community and celebrate queer joy,” Wehrenberg said.

Wehrenberg expressed that so often when Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ stories are told in the media, it is through a lens of oppression and tragedy.

“It is also really important to highlight and tell stories of resilience and love and joy, because we all deserve to be seen as we are here, queer, trans, Indigenous, proud, strong and fully human, because only telling the stories of oppression and tragedy, in a way, strips us of humanity because it doesn’t highlight or show any understanding of the fact that we have whole lives and joy and love surrounding us too,” Wehrenberg said.

This story is co-published by Underscore Native News and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.

The post Queer Prom: A space for queer youth to be ‘unabashedly themselves’ appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8536301

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50433

Colorado Supreme Court // Jeffrey Beall

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Today, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered Children’s Hospital Colorado to resume gender-affirming care for transgender youth, ruling 5-2 that the hospital discriminated against transgender youth patients when it shuttered its care program earlier this year in capitulation to Trump. The decision reverses a district court that had ruled against forcing the hospital to return to care and directs that court to issue a preliminary injunction restoring care while the case proceeds. Children’s Hospital Colorado was one of roughly 40 hospitals across the country that capitulated to Trump administration threats and ended their trans youth care programs. In its ruling, the state’s highest court held that the hospital’s fears of federal retaliation could not override Colorado’s civil rights protections for transgender people.

The case began in December, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration claiming that gender-affirming care for transgender youth was “neither safe nor effective” and warning that hospitals providing such care could be excluded from federal health care programs including Medicare and Medicaid. Children’s Hospital Colorado halted its program in January, and four transgender youth and their families sued under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. A Denver district court judge found that the families would likely prove they had been discriminated against and that their children faced irreparable harm, but denied them relief anyway, reasoning that forcing the hospital to resume care could provoke catastrophic federal retaliation. As we reported in April, the families appealed directly to the Colorado Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Kennedy declaration was blocked in court for several violations of law.

In Monday’s decision, the court rejected the hospital’s central defense: that it had not discriminated against transgender youth but had simply declined to offer one category of treatment. The justices found that distinction meaningless, noting that the hospital continued to provide the very same medications, puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to cisgender youth while denying them to transgender patients. “Even without analyzing the disparate treatment between transgender and cisgender youth, CHC’s policy to suspend providing medical gender-affirming care explicitly discriminates against patients because of their gender identity,” the court wrote. “Gender-affirming care is inextricably intertwined with gender identity,” ruling that ceasing providing care was discrimination against transgender people and therefore illegal under state law.

The majority was equally direct in rejecting the hospital’s argument that it had merely been following the Kennedy Declaration. “Although CHC acted reluctantly and expressed no animus toward transgender patients, the action it chose to take in response to the Kennedy Declaration specifically targeted transgender youth patients,” the court wrote. “The Kennedy Declaration may have influenced CHC’s decision, but it doesn’t absolve CHC of responsibility.”

The most consequential portion of the ruling addressed whether federal threats could be allowed to override state civil rights law. The district court had reasoned that ordering the hospital to resume care would compel it to violate federal law. The Colorado Supreme Court flatly rejected that framing. “The trial court’s concern about opposing the public interest by ordering CHC to ‘violat[e] . . . federal law’ is also misplaced,” the court wrote. “Why? Because the Kennedy Declaration isn’t federal law.” The justices also refused to weigh the harm to transgender youth against the broader hospital population in raw numerical terms, a comparison the district court had used to side with the hospital. “We conclude that a Trinidad-style strict numerical comparison of affected individuals isn’t appropriate when the individuals seeking injunctive relief are part of a protected class and seeking an injunction because of discrimination based on that protected class,” the majority wrote. “Were it otherwise, minority groups would always lose. But that is not the law. On the contrary, that’s precisely why we have protected classes.”

The court found that the actual harm to transgender youth far outweighed the hospital’s speculative fears, describing in stark terms what the loss of care had done to the plaintiffs. “Petitioners and other transgender youth who sought such care from CHC were suddenly abandoned during a precarious time,” the court wrote, noting that the children had “experienced depression, and in at least two instances, suicidal ideation.” The justices detailed the case of one plaintiff, Danielle Doe, whose family had moved from Texas to Colorado for its protections for transgender people. “After learning that CHC could no longer provide her care, Danielle was hospitalized at CHC for a depressive episode,” the ruling states. “She wrote her mother a letter that expressed suicidal ideation, stating, ‘If I don’t see you again, I love you.’” By contrast, the court found the hospital’s feared exclusion from federal programs “speculative,” noting that no exclusion could occur without notice, hearings, and opportunities for judicial review, and that a federal court in Oregon had since declared the Kennedy Declaration unlawful and barred HHS from enforcing it.

Two justices dissented. Justice Brian Boatright, joined by Justice Carlos Samour, argued that the hospital had acted not because of its patients’ gender identity but because it faced “the risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, which would threaten the viability of its entire hospital system.” The majority was unpersuaded, holding that a “reluctant” act of discrimination compelled by a “third party” remains discrimination under Colorado law. With the decision, Children’s Hospital Colorado joins a growing number of hospitals, including Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and Children’s Minnesota, that have moved to restore gender-affirming care after initially halting it under federal pressure. The ruling also answers the question many public officials have been grappling with in terms of state anti-discrimination law: whether vague federal threats, unaccompanied by any law or court order, are enough to nullify a state’s civil rights protections. The Colorado Supreme Court’s answer was firmly: no.

A full copy of the ruling can be found here:

2026 05 18 Opinion

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8537717

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50351

John M. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Colorado–

Lurking in the deepest bowels of Colorado, a coalition calling itself Protect Kids Colorado has mobilized to push three ballot initiatives onto the Nov. 2026 ballot, each draped in the rhetoric of child protection but rooted in the reactionary impulses of the ruling class. This campaign exemplifies a deeper contradiction within capitalist society: the selective outrage of Christian nationalist factions who proclaim to safeguard “girls in sports” from transgender participation, framing it as a defense of biological purity and fairness. Yet, this same moral fervor evaporates when confronting the systemic exploitation embedded in the capitalist order.

Led by anti-LGBTQ+ “activist” Erin Lee, the group submitted over 165,000 signatures for Initiative 110, which seeks to ban surgeries on minors aimed at altering biological sex characteristics, and to prohibit public funding for gender-affirming care. More than 170,000 signatures backed Initiative 109, mandating that schools and athletic associations define sports teams by physical anatomy at birth, effectively barring transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports. A similar number supported Initiative 108, which would ramp up penalties for human trafficking of minors.

These measures, if passed, would not only restrict transgender youth from essential healthcare and fair participation but would also enforce rigid, state-sanctioned definitions of gender that serve to police bodies in service to outdated hierarchies.

Similar initiatives are proliferating across the U.S., with over 700 anti-trans bills tracked in 41 states for 2026, including bans on sports participation, healthcare, and bathroom access, highlighting a coordinated assault by bourgeois interests to divide the working class. In Missouri, ballot measures seek to enshrine bans on gender-affirming care for minors alongside abortion restrictions, using trans youth as pawns to simultaneously undermine reproductive freedoms.

Efforts in Washington, Maine, and Nevada also aim to put trans sports bans directly to voters, reflecting the ruling class’ strategy to legitimize discrimination through electoral theater, to the symphony of inflammatory, unscientific, and sensationalist disinformation campaigns via the media.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a leading Christian Nationalist, stands with her fans from Moms for Liberty-Wisconsin in front of the Capitol. (Moms For Liberty-Wisconsin)

These groups, often aligned with MAGA ideology, rally against transgender girls as existential threats while turning a blind eye—or worse, offering defenses—for capitalist pedophiles whose crimes are shielded by wealth and power. Consider the parade of high-profile figures in bourgeois circles, from financiers like Jeffrey Epstein to political elites entangled in abuse scandals, where accusations of child exploitation are dismissed as “fake news” or reframed as consensual indiscretions. The ruling class’ apparatus, including media conglomerates and legal systems, routinely minimizes these atrocities, allowing predators to evade accountability through settlements, NDAs, and influence peddling.

Capitalism thrives on the commodification of bodies, particularly those of the vulnerable, turning human trafficking and exploitation into profitable industries that bolster the accumulation of capital for the few. The hypocrisy is stark: Republicans accused of shielding pedophiles in the Epstein case, with Democrats charging that GOP refusal to release files protects the elite, while MAGA figures like Trump have been linked to Epstein yet face no reckoning from their base. Right-wing conspiracies like QAnon obsess over fictional pedophile rings among liberals, diverting attention from real abuses by their own, such as Capitol rioters convicted of child abuse who heckled police for “protecting pedophiles.”

Christian nationalists, who denounce transgender rights as anti-biblical, conveniently ignore their own defenses of abusers, exposing the selective application of “morality” to maintain patriarchal control. The hypocrisy intensifies when examining the so-called “pro-life” stance of these reactionaries.

While they decry abortion as murder and push for draconian bans that strip women and girls of bodily autonomy, their policies accelerate the immiseration of the working class. MAGA forces, under the banner of family values, have systematically dismantled reproductive rights, gutted social safety nets, and opposed measures like paid family leave or affordable childcare, ensuring that forced births trap women in cycles of poverty and dependence.

This isn’t about life, it’s about control. In a system where labor power is extracted for profit, women’s rights are subordinated to the needs of capital reproduction. The bourgeois state enforces this through legislation that prioritizes fetal personhood over living workers, all while corporate overlords reap the benefits of a desperate, underpaid workforce. The proclaimed sanctity of life clashes with the reality of capitalist death—through wars, environmental devastation, and healthcare denial—that claims millions annually.

The post-Roe era has deepened inequities, with abortion bans costing the U.S. economy $173 billion annually, lowering women’s earnings, education, and health outcomes, particularly for Black women and the poor, while increasing poverty and single parenthood. Overruling Roe has not been “pro-life” but a continuation of government control over women’s bodies, eroding their autonomy and futures. Pro-life rhetoric, including claims of “feminism,” masks this assault, portraying restrictions as protective while dishonoring women’s dignity and rights.

Compounding this is the complicity of the Democratic Party, which postures as a progressive counterweight but capitulates at every turn. Facing an electorate manipulated by misinformation and economic anxiety, Democrats have increasingly thrown the transgender community under the bus, offering tepid defenses or outright concessions to gain votes from a misinformed public. Rather than mounting a robust pushback against these anti-trans measures, they prioritize electoral pragmatism, echoing centrist appeals that dilute class struggle into identity politics.

This betrayal stems from their role as the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, managing capitalism’s crises without challenging its foundations. By allowing reactionary narratives to dominate, framing transgender rights as a wedge issue, they divert attention from the real antagonists: the exploiters who profit from division. The working masses, fragmented along lines of gender, race, and sexuality, are pitted against one another, obscuring the class antagonism that unites them against the owners of production.

Post-2024 election losses, Democrats have openly blamed their support for trans rights, with figures like Reps. Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi arguing the party went “too far left,” splintering over issues like sports bans and DEI, and retreating from defending trans people in order to avoid offending moderates. This “reshuffling” cedes ground to the far right, prioritizing the hunt for votes over solidarity, and failing to achieve either. Kamala Harris, the candidate who, as an Attorney General in California, pursued transphobic interpretations of criminal justice, and who downplayed the importance of protecting transgender rights in the 2024 election cycle, did not go “too far left” but abandoned the laboring and popular masses of America who have long struggled for change and progress.

At its core, these phenomena reflect the material base of capitalism shaping its ideological superstructure. Christian nationalism, with its patriarchal and nationalist trappings, functions as a tool to maintain social cohesion amid economic decay. By scapegoating transgender individuals, it channels working-class frustrations—born of wage stagnation, housing crises, and job insecurity—away from the capitalist culprits and toward marginalized groups. Initiative 108’s focus on human trafficking penalties, for instance, appears noble but serves as a smokescreen, ignoring how capitalism’s global supply chains and austerity policies fuel trafficking networks. True protection for children and women demands dismantling the profit motive that breeds exploitation, not performative bans that reinforce bourgeois morality.

The path forward lies in recognizing these contradictions and building solidarity among the oppressed. Workers, regardless of gender, sex, or sexual orientation, must unite to expose how such campaigns perpetuate ruling-class dominance, divide us via chauvinistic and sensationalist spectacles, and inspire nothing but dismay and demoralization amongst the organized working class. Only through collective action—striking at the heart of private property and imperial control—can we forge a society where rights are not commodities but universal realities. In Colorado and beyond, the fight against these initiatives is about much more than transgender inclusion: it’s a front in the broader war against capitalist hypocrisy.

From The Red Phoenix via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8500566

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/49641

NYU Langone Health Site

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Earlier this week, Erin in the Morning reported that the Texas Northern District Court issued criminal subpoenas to multiple hospitals, demanding “information” on every minor to whom they provided gender-affirming care to since 2020. NYU Langone, located in and around New York City, has been the first and only institution to publicly disclose the receipt of such a subpoena thus far. On Wednesday, Langone released the subpoena full.

We have published the subpoena at the bottom of this article. Here’s what it says and what it means for Langone patients and families.

Langone sent a message via their patient portal Monday night that it was told to hand over the names of “providers and others who were involved in offering such care at NYULH in that timeframe.”

It also said the Department of Justice wanted “information” on trans patients that it served, but it did not elaborate further on what that means. The message from Langone said it “was one of several institutions” that received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas.

While around two dozen institutions received subpoenas during ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s reign at the DOJ, these grand jury subpoenas are an escalation. Those issued by Bondi were civil in nature; these entail a criminal investigation, which introduces the prospect of jail time as both a punishment if someone is convicted of a crime and as a potential enforcement mechanism for the subpoena.

This newest revelation also shines a light on the increasingly common tactics of the Trump playbook: They cast a wide net and hope at least part of it will hold up in court.

Langone is located about 2,000 miles northeast of the Northern District of Texas, which is widely considered to be among the most conservative districts in the country. The choice to hold proceedings there was characterized by some experts as an abuse of the judiciary system.

“This is a blatant unlawful effort by the DOJ to intimidate providers of gender-affirming care to trans youth by engaging in judge and forum shopping,” Alejandra Caraballo, a Harvard Law instructor and trans legal scholar told Erin in the Morning, referring to the practice of bringing cases to districts that lawyers think will be most sympathetic to their cause.

Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, told Sophie Hurwitz of Mother Jones that the subpoena is “a blatant attempt to harass and intimidate medical providers based on this administration’s ideological opposition to transgender people.”

“This,” Minter concluded, “is mafia-type behavior.”

However, hospitals, patients, and state actors can try to fight back. New York has rigorous shield laws that protect gender-affirming care patients and providers from out-of-state prosecution. It creates significant barriers to overreaching subpoenas, court proceedings, and law enforcement. How this applies to a federal case post-Trump is an emerging area of law, with many questions yet to be answered.

Moreover, a case from the Northern District of Texas is a particularly dire escalation, both because it is among the most hostile courts in the country towards transgender people, and because grand jury subpoenas are far harder to challenge than the administrative subpoenas that courts have quashed before.

But as seen with institutions like Rhode Island Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, some hospitals are finding ways to resist Trumpian attacks on care. State actors and patients themselves have also gone to court to combat federal encroachments on care and potential hospital capitulation—such as with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Rady Children’s Hospital, both of which are in California.

For this newest case, here’s what we know so far.

1. **Doctors aren’t the only providers targeted by the subpoena.**The DOJ is requesting names of administrators, accountants, attorneys and even hospital volunteers involved in rendering gender-affirming care or billing for it through insurance.

Excerpts from the subpoena sent to NYU Langone.

2. **In addition to the names of providers, the DOJ wants the names and medical histories of every trans youth patient who received gender-affirming care from Langone since 2020. The DOJ also asserted that “de-identified information” is insufficient.**The request explicitly asks for patients’ names as well as any communications and “documents” relating to their care. This may include patient charts, medical and psychiatric notes, and detailed accounts of a patient’s medical history. It likely also includes sensitive information on patients’ families, such as addresses, and it directly asks for parental consent forms signed by caretakers.

3. **The Langone subpoena targets communications with and documents about pharmaceutical companies, drug manufacturers, and the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH).**This isn’t surprising given the Trump Administration’s longheld assertion that “the gender industry,” as radical anti-trans activists call it, is some sort of wide-reaching apparatus tricking vulnerable children into needless medical procedures to turn a profit; further, it has fixated on WPATH, the premier organization for determining medical standards for trans people’s health care.

   The Federal Trade Commission hosted an event last year, as Erin in the Morning reported, laying out how it planned to target medical institutions—like hospitals, clinics, professional organizations, and drug manufacturers—by accusing them of medical “fraud.”

4. The subpoena interrogates matters of informed consent and any “medically unfavorable consequence” experienced by patients. This is emblematic of the administration’s wider efforts to gather data for the purpose of manufacturing scientific doubt about gender-affirming care—and empower those in the “detransitioner” political movement to sue their doctors, an endeavor that has mostly been unsuccessful thus far.

5. **The subpoena latches on to the term “sex-rejecting procedures,” an unscientific dogwhistle pushed by gender conservatives to describe and undermine gender-affirming care.**The term was popularized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s screed against pediatric gender care, but one thing that makes this subpoena unique is that it also targets “voice modifications”—which could refer to surgical procedures to modify a person’s voice, but written this broadly, could in theory apply to simple voice training. It also calls affirming mental health care, such as psychotherapy, a “sex-rejecting procedure” when offered to transgender minors.

What comes next?

In short: We can’t know for sure.

Other hospitals may send out notifications to patients about the receipt of a subpoena in the coming weeks. New York’s shield law requires providers inform patients about any such pursuits within 30 days. For states without shield laws, the waters are murkier; criminal investigations are often much more opaque than civil ones. To this day, the full list of hospitals who received Bondi’s slate of administrative subpoenas is still not publicly known.

However, as per Law Dork’s Chris Geidner, even DOJ lawyers have acknowledged that the purpose of these subpoenas is to bully and intimidate hospitals and “to stop trans minors from being able to obtain gender-affirming medical care.”

This is a far cry from the concerns about medical “fraud” being touted by Trump propaganda. As per Geidner, one DOJ lawyer said, “[T]he policy is that the executive branch wants to reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors [...] That [is what] this investigation is about.”

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Nyu Gj Subpoena (1)

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8441411

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Photo by Delia Giandeini on Unsplash

On Wednesday, the Trevor Project released a massive survey of LGBTQ+ youth, with one of the largest subsamples of transgender people of any survey previously recorded. The survey, which questioned 16,667 respondents, included over 10,000 trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer respondents. The survey found harsh experiences among LGBTQ+ people and especially transgender people, including high rates of bullying and harassment, difficulty accessing healthcare, and nearly a third of respondents saying anti-LGBTQ+ policies had made them or their families consider moving to a different state. Among the most significant findings, however, was the impact of access to gender-affirming care on transgender youth: transgender and nonbinary young people who wanted hormones to support their gender transition but were unable to access them were nearly twice as likely to report a past-year suicide attempt compared to those who were currently taking hormones.

"Transgender and nonbinary youth who reported being unable to access hormones to support their gender transition or expression were nearly twice as likely to report a past-year suicide attempt compared to those who were currently taking hormones (15% vs 8%)," reads the report. The finding is consistent with a growing body of peer-reviewed research linking anti-trans policies to worsening mental health outcomes. A 2024 study published in Nature Human Behavior—the first to establish a causal link between anti-trans laws and suicide risk—found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased past-year suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%, with the highest increases among those under 18. The CDC's own Youth Risk Behavior Survey has documented similarly elevated rates, finding that over half of transgender high school students seriously considered suicide and more than a quarter attempted it during the rise in anti-trans legislation. Taken together, the evidence points in one direction: restricting access to gender-affirming care is harmful for transgender youth.

Difficulty in accessing hormones and suicide risk

Importantly, the survey also showed that the vast majority of transgender youth do not have access to or are not taking hormones or puberty blockers. Among transgender and nonbinary respondents aged 13-17, only 10% reported taking hormones to support their gender transition. Among those 18-24, the number rose to 44%, still less than half. Just 3% reported taking puberty blockers. These numbers run counter to the political narrative that transgender youth are being rushed into medical intervention. The reality, according to the survey's own data, is that the overwhelming majority of transgender minors are not receiving hormones or puberty blockers at all.

For transgender youth who do have access to care, there is enormous anxiety over whether it will continue. Of the transgender and nonbinary youth currently taking hormones, 87% reported being concerned about losing access. Ninety percent of all LGBTQ+ youth said recent anti-LGBTQ+ laws, policies, and debates caused them stress or anxiety, and 94% of trans and nonbinary respondents answered likewise. Worse, 32% of LGBTQ+ youth said these laws and policies had made them or their families consider moving to a different state altogether. That finding is consistent with broader migration data: a Movement Advancement Project/NORC poll found 400,000 transgender people had relocated since the 2024 election alone.

The survey comes amid an unprecedented wave of attacks on transgender youth and their ability to access care. Over the last two years, the Supreme Court has greenlit a suite of anti-trans policies, including in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Several states, all Republican-controlled, have now banned such care. The Trump administration has gone further still, issuing the Kennedy Declaration to threaten hospitals' federal funding for providing care—a policy that caused more than 40 hospital systems to shut down their trans youth programs. Meanwhile, anti-trans pseudoscience groups are attempting to launder misinformation about care and push conversion therapy-like practices at major medical conferences. This survey cuts through the false claim by the far-right that their efforts are somehow protective of youth. Denying transgender youth who want hormones clearly does not help them, but rather, is associated with nearly double the rate of suicide attempts.

Gender-affirming care saves lives. A Cornell review of more than 51 studies found that such care significantly improves the mental health of transgender people. One major study reported a 73 percent drop in suicidality among trans youth who began treatment; another found a 40 percent reduction in actual suicide attempts in the previous year. Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in April 2024 showed puberty blockers sharply reduced depression and anxiety. Abroad, a German review backed by 27 medical organizations endorsed gender-affirming care for youth, and a recent French medical consensus did the same. The evidence has driven a historic resolution from the American Psychological Association—representing 157,000 members—formally condemning bans on trans care.

“Given the current climate in our country, it comes as no surprise that many LGBTQ+ young people are reporting high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Similar to previous research, this national survey demonstrates that LGBTQ+ youth experience these negative mental health outcomes not because of who they are, but because of how they are mistreated by others,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, in a press release. “These young people report they are being bullied, discriminated against, and debated about by politicians simply for being themselves. While many of these results are difficult to read, this year’s data point to a hopeful reality for LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S., too: When LGBTQ+ young people report they have welcoming and supportive communities, spaces, and people in their lives, their risk for attempting suicide lowers significantly. As adults and allies, this is our call to action: we must continue to vocally and visibly show the LGBTQ+ young people in our lives that they belong, exactly as they are.”

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8479606

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/48379

Valerie Plesch / Bloomberg via NBC News

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Last night, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted preliminary injunctions in two parallel cases—Endocrine Society v. FTC and World Professional Association for Transgender Health v. FTC—enjoining the Federal Trade Commission from enforcing civil investigative demands against the two leading medical organizations on transgender health. The judge ruled in both cases that the FTC likely violated the organizations' First Amendment rights and engaged in unlawful retaliation against them for their protected speech supporting gender-affirming care. Boasberg further found that the Trump administration and the FTC had pursued the organizations based on "extensive evidence of animus" and "wafer-thin justifications" for their demands. For now, the private communications, internal deliberations, and member information of these two organizations are protected from the Trump administration's escalating campaign of government censorship and retaliation against the medical institutions that support transgender people.

"On this preliminary record, with extensive evidence of animus and wafer-thin justifications lacking evidentiary support, [the Court] finds that WPATH is likely to demonstrate a causal link between its protected speech and the FTC's issuance of the CID,” said the judge in the WPATH ruling. In the parallel Endocrine Society ruling issued the same day, the judge went likewise found similar violations: "The Court finds the same systemic targeting of proponents of medical treatment for gender incongruence at work here. The Society is the latest casualty in some Executive Branch agencies' bid to investigate hospitals, medical providers, and charitable organizations that support transgender health. The CID's focus on academic and medical speech, combined with the FTC's paucity of logic or evidence pointing to a genuine investigation, confirms the conclusion that the CID was likely issued for a retaliatory purpose."

The cases center on Civil Investigative Demands—administrative subpoenas the FTC issued to both organizations in January 2026, demanding sweeping and unprecedented access to their internal operations. The FTC ordered the organizations to turn over decades of internal communications about their clinical guidelines on gender dysphoria, every educational and advocacy material, every financial record, and the names of every member who had ever helped develop claims about gender-affirming care—potentially thousands of people. The CID to WPATH alarmingly reached back to 1979, the year WPATH was founded. The CIDs are part of a sprawling Trump administration campaign to suppress speech about transgender people and crush the institutions that provide it: the Kennedy Declaration, which drove more than 40 hospital systems to shutter their trans youth programs before a federal judge vacated it as unlawful last month; CMS proposed rules that would bar Medicare and Medicaid-receiving hospitals from providing such care entirely; and DOJ subpoenas to hospitals across the country, which federal judges have repeatedly quashed as "smokescreens" for retaliation. The FTC's CIDs were the latest weapon in that campaign.

The organizations challenged the demands in federal court. Last night, they won. Boasberg ruled that the CIDs were retaliation against WPATH and the Endocrine Society for their protected speech in support of gender-affirming care, and that the FTC's campaign against them was rooted in extensive animus. Among the evidence the judge cited to show extensive animus towards transgender people was: Trump's executive orders denouncing gender identity as "subversive" and "false ideology" and labeling gender-affirming care "mutilation"; FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson's pre-appointment memo pledging to "fight back against the trans agenda" and investigate "the doctors, therapists, hospitals, and others" providing such care; senior FTC staff publicly accusing medical associations of "malpractice" and calling journalists covering trans issues "partisan morons"; and the FTC's July 2025 workshop "The Dangers of 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Minors," at which speakers called gender dysphoria "science fiction" and "the foundational fraud" and described their work as a "battle of good versus evil." The judge also noted that one workshop participant—who explicitly recommended investigating medical associations to make them "start losing members" and "lose revenue streams"—was subsequently hired by the FTC.

The judge also ruled that the CIDs were designed to chill protected speech regardless of whether the FTC ever pursued formal enforcement. "The CID and the accompanying threat of future enforcement sit as a Sword of Damocles suspended over Plaintiff's head," Boasberg wrote. "To mix weaponry metaphors, the Society alleges that the FTC is using its investigative demands as a cudgel, 'inflict[ing] concrete and ongoing injuries that suppress speech,' regardless of any later enforcement action." The judge grounded that conclusion in a recent D.C. Circuit ruling, Media Matters for America v. FTC, in which the appellate court blocked another retaliatory FTC subpoena—that one targeting the progressive media watchdog group over its reporting on advertisements appearing next to white nationalist content on Elon Musk's Twitter platform. Citing that precedent, Boasberg wrote that Congress would never have intended to give an agency "license to run roughshod over a party's First Amendment rights." With that, he blocked the FTC from enforcing the subpoenas against WPATH and the Endocrine Society while the cases proceed.

"WPATH welcomes the Court's decision to grant our request for a preliminary injunction against this unlawful and retaliatory investigative demand by the FTC. We are hopeful that this preliminary injunction will prevent further harm to the First Amendment rights of WPATH and its members. For more than 50 years, WPATH has been committed to developing guidelines informed by established scientific standards, expert consensus, and patient-centered values. WPATH's dedication to this mission and the patient population it serves remains unwavering," WPATH said in a emailed statement Thursday evening.

"The D.C. District Court ruling is an important victory that recognizes medical guidelines are a valued resource that allow doctors to support patients in making decisions about their care. This ruling sends a powerful message that government efforts to pressure the medical and scientific community to abandon evidence-based practices are not permissible. In addition to affirming the Endocrine Society's First Amendment right to speak freely on matters of public health, the court recognized the chilling effect the government's actions have on the Society's work and the harm to public interest. This decision is a helpful step in ensuring the Endocrine Society can continue to advance endocrine health and patient well-being by providing clinicians with medically sound, evidence-based information," the Endocrine Society said in its own statement to the Advocate.

A third parallel case—brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which received its own CID from the FTC on the same day as WPATH—remains pending before Judge Christopher R. Cooper, another Obama-nominated judge on the same D.C. District Court.

You can find the WPATH and Endocrine Society rulings here:

Endocrine Society Memorandum Opinion

308KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Wpath Memorandum Opinion

199KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

From Erin In The Morning via This RSS Feed.

So, its been a while for me ( 10 years ) that IK I'm a transgender women ( 23 rn ) but how ever because of my family ( they are religious ) and my country government nu-written law I couldn't hrt. All I need is approve of a therapist so my family would buy their words, but every therapist I went tries to convince me that I'm just Gay or Bisexual etc, the last therapist I went accepted in total but she said to me that she needs to take a test from me just to be sure :D . and that stuff is pushing me into a very big confusion what is they are right and I'm not trans? and if so why this feeling and dysphoria never went down?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5710134

A new sci-fi thriller short film, with Matrix co-director Lilly Wachowski serving as executive producer, features an all-transgender-women cast.

The 18-minute film, Dolls, marks the directorial debut of trans filmmaker Geena Rocero, and the cast includes Yên Sen, Arewà Basit, Macy Rodman and Vas Eli, as well as the director herself.

Described as a trans-coded take on 70s cult classic The Stepford Wives, the new film follows Yan, a private investigator who infiltrates a suspicious dating workshop for transgender women after being hired to find a missing girl.

Full Article

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5682496

The island nation of Cuba will now allow transgender people to change the gender markers on their government-issued identity cards without having to undergo “bottom surgery,” a legal change long sought by the country’s trans and nonbinary communities.

On July 18, the country’s National Assembly of People’s Power (NAPP) approved a law allowing people to change their gender markers without first requiring a court-approved document proving that applicants had undergone genital affirming surgeries.

This new law is one of several recently approved by the NAPP to update the technology and policies of the nation’s record-keeping system. Cuba’s new Civil Registry code will now recognize unmarried couples’ emotional unions or cohabitation agreements, providing some legal recognition of various domestic partnerships.

Full Article

It's one of the CSDs where Nazis tried to interfere massively, unfortunately.

Translation

proud and courageous - never quiet again

maxine cho is a korean-american trans girl. her best friend is michael larsen, a norwegian-american trans boy.

maxine's parents, mr. and mrs. cho, are very supportive of maxine as they don't care how their daughter identifies, while mr. larsen... not so much. (mrs. larsen loves michael anyway though).

one night, maxine and michael go to bed and maxine thinks "i wish i had his body." michael thinks, "i wish i had her body".

when michael wakes up, he realizes he's in maxine's bed, in maxine's house! maxine realizes the same. not just that, but they're now in each other's bodies.

like, that's such a cis girl think to think your parents were hiding from you the fact that you were secretly a dude, right?!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/28573541

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/28573520

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/28573462

Hey fam, I’m reaching out because I’m really unwell and things have been overwhelming. I’ve just been diagnosed with malaria, typhoid, and peptic ulcers. The clinic bill is about $250, and I can’t afford it on my own right now.

On top of that, I’m still dealing with the constant pressure of eviction threats from the government, and this sickness has knocked me even further down when I already felt like I was barely holding on.

I know many of us are struggling, but if anyone is in a position to help even just a few dollars or a share it would mean the world to me. The support link is on my profile.

Thank you for seeing me. In care and trans solidarity

https://gofund.me/bd40a4f9

random question. i'm ftm and i go by jay. i'm fine with going by jay but i use a different name irl.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8418579

I want an avi with a trans flag or symbol in the background.

I can always use Canva, I suppose, but what should my avi be, dammit? I want Kirby but Kirby's a boy, I think.

I want a girl avatar.

The UK's EHRC recently opened a public review period for their new Code of Practice for following the Equality Act of 2010.

Despite previous claims that this judgement does not reduce trans rights, its new Code of Practice tells a different story.

I spent 8 hours reading through the entire Code of Practice, analysing it and writing up my feedback. Like all the trans people who organized a Mass Lobby over this, I also concluded that this new guidance was horrific. See Trans Solidarity Alliance's guidance on this situation.

Amongst many other dangerous and belittling statements about "biological sex" and how trans people should use services that align with their sex at birth stated throughout the entire thing, it clearly states in Section 13.3.19 that single sex services cannot lawfully include trans people of a matching gender. Asserting that this would amount to discrimination against cis people of the opposite sex.

Picture this: You're a trans person that has suffered domestic abuse. You seek a support group to help you. You find a women's support group friendly to trans women. A gender critical finds out about this, and asks a cis male friend to threaten to sue the support group for discrimination. The support group is forced to make a difficult decision: become trans-exclusionary, leaving you with no support or go to court on the matter.

This EHRC views the complaint by the cis man, here as completely lawful and in following with the Equality Act, an act meant to protect minorities, and urges organizations to not include trans people because of it.

It bases its entire guidance on the idea that trans people are not their acquired gender, and it's ok to pry into and treat them as their birth sex.

“I feel no threat from any trans person that might be in the toilets, I’ve never felt threatened by a trans person as it turns out.”

I'm seeing headlines that Republicans quietly posted a report proving trans healthcare saves lives and simultaneously seeing that Utah Republicans stand by the ban(1) and are misquoting the report's conclusions.

Download the report from the Utah State website where it's hosted.

When I clicked the "Download Report" links from Firefox, the file that downloads doesn't open as a readable report. That may be a problem on my end though.

(1) Utah Lawmakers Stand by Gender Care Ban After Study Refutes Reasoning

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30622199

Note that I believe this has not been ratified yet, but is set to be voted on this coming week.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29084869

Thankfully, this amendment has been voted down. If I had known about this Lemmy community I would have posted it there. I will post these here from now on 🙂.

Link to a Reddit post by an activist I know.

But to summarise, Amendment NC21 to the Data Use and Access Bill would require sex to be defined as "sex at birth" for all identity verification requests.

This includes people who have changed their sex legally, which will now be separately catalogued.

This means that all kinds of people, including (potential) employers, landlords, government staff etc. will be able to look up these details about you.

This amendment will be voted on on the 7th of May, so if you're in the UK please badger your MP to vote against it (template email in the Reddit post)

Trans, broke, and homeless…I’m so hungry, I haven’t eaten much the past few days. Trying to raise some funds to get some food. Thank you so much for your kindness!

To Send Me a Donation:

Venmo Username- BlessedBiKindness https://venmo.com/u/BlessedBiKindness

CashApp Tag- $paresumluv

PayPal Username- bigwixi

Facebook Messenger- DM me for details

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4639970

URGENTLY NEED HELP BAILING MY TRANS (M2F) BEST FRIEND OUT OF JAIL ASAP! THEY'VE BEEN WRONGFULLY PUT INTO THE MENS SIDE IN GEN POP, SO THEIR SAFETY IS IN JEOPARDY! PLEASE READ!! AND THANK YOU SO MUCH TO THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY DONATED TO HELP OUR FRIEND!!

My best friend who goes by "Rachel" (Not their legal name, therefore not their arresting name) Hexbear Username- allthetimesivedied [they/them, she/her], Was arrested about 2 weeks ago when the police stopped to ask them why they were asleep in their car in a parking lot...Unfortunately their tags were expired, and they had 2 warrants in 2 counties. We are trying to bail them out, but with the cost of their bail, their fines/fees, and the cost for new tags for their vehicle, we need about $1,000 total. So far we've only raised about $180. Please, if you can afford to donate anything at all, we would be SO grateful. Or even just sharing this post if you can't afford to donate would help, as well! Thank you all so much for your continued support, Let's bring Rachel home!!!

~Ashlee

Ways To Donate:

CashApp Ca$hTag- ashleeillest

Venmo- ashleeillest

Paypal Username- ashleeportland

For more information or questions (Or other ways to send donations if any of the above options don't work for you) please DM me!!!

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7572635

I should consider this...

I wonder if Virginia has anything like this.