RedWizard

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/65163

David Michael Brouillette's ex-wife said he is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, according to Thursday reporting by The Portland Press Herald.

"He was asking me to lie for him and to cover for his character," Ashley Brouillette told the newspaper. "I told him that I was not going to lie for him. And then he tried to say that it was a justified shooting because the guy tried to hit him with his car."

According to the Press Herald, which reviewed a screenshot of incoming calls to Ashley Brouillette, she said that she'd seen video footage of the shooting and told her ex-husband that "nowhere in there does it show that this man charged at you with a car."

Common Dreams has not independently verified Ashley Brouillette's claims—which also included that he was abusive during their relationship; she previously reported concerns about the US Army veteran's mental health to his superiors in the military; and she and her family have received threats since reports of her ex’s involvement in the shooting began to spread online.

The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has refused to name any involved agents, and David Brouillette—a Manchester-based 37-year-old who is also a licensed real estate agent and has held various law enforcement and public safety jobs in the state—did not respond to the Press Herald's multiple requests for comment.

However, "a witness to the Biddeford shooting, Daniel Boucher, told the Press Herald he saw an agent on scene who matched Brouillette's description," the newspaper noted. "Three people who worked with Brouillette at the Manchester Fire Department also confirmed that Brouillette was pictured in images they saw from video of the scene in Biddeford after the shooting."

David Brouillette was previously identified as the shooter by TheICEList.org, a website founded by Netherlands-based immigration activist Dominick Skinner that serves as "a public, verifiable record of US immigration enforcement—incidents, agents, deaths, vehicles, and facilities—documented with sources and open to everyone."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/65251

Democrats in Congress have remained largely silent and inactive in the wake of ICE agents’ fatal shootings of two immigrant men in Maine and Texas, displaying lackluster energy compared to the party’s response to the killings of two white U.S. citizens earlier this year.

By early March, after federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, 32 Democratic members of Congress had called to either abolish or dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including three members who had previously voted to “express gratitude to ICE.” Democrats rapidly introduced legislation to restrict, defund, or abolish the federal immigration agency. And for months, Democrats in the House successfully blocked funding of the Department of Homeland Security with the unrealized goal of obtaining minor restrictions on immigration agents.

Although protesters took to the streets in Maine and Texas in the ides of summer to object to ICE’s killing of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford and 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, that glimmer of enthusiasm for action appears to have died down in the halls of Congress.

“I’ll be honest. I’m not seeing [anger] to the extent I saw when Alex and Renee were executed by ICE in Minnesota. … I’ve seen some statements come up, and some conversations, but it has not been elevated to the extent that I would expect from a number of my colleagues,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill. “It feels like we’re normalizing it.”

Democrats caved on DHS funding in April, and with some exceptions, most of the caucus has been silent on the existing bills to restrict the agency. Progressives have criticized their colleagues for not continuing to fight against funding the Department of Homeland Security, and for only acting in a moment of heightened political attention.

[

Related

Would-Be Platner Replacements in Maine Rally Around “Abolish ICE” (or Something Close)](https://theintercept.com/2026/07/16/maine-platner-replacement-abolish-ice-shootings/)

In January, Ramirez and Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., introduced the Melt ICE Act, a bill that would end DHS funding to detain or monitor immigrants. The legislation, which Ramirez says is “not all things” but represents a meaningful step toward dismantling the entire agency, currently has 12 co-sponsors, including members of the progressive Squad and two retiring members who will leave Congress at the end of the current term.

Ramirez said she had hoped to pick up additional backing in the wake of Durán Guerrero and Salgado Araujo’s killings, but she has yet to hear from any additional co-sponsors — even from colleagues who were calling to “Abolish ICE” in February and sharing press releases with the words “Melt ICE” in them.

The Chicago congresswoman said she worried that the lack of action had to do in part with the fact that Pretti and Good were white U.S. citizens, and Durán Guerrero and Salgado Araujo were noncitizens from Colombia and Mexico, respectively. She noted that one of the first fatal ICE shootings under the second Trump administration — of undocumented Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas González last September in Chicago — rarely gets mentioned.

“Why is it that for some, when the person seems to be lighter-skinned, a U.S. citizen, the uproar seems to be deeper?” Ramirez said. “And why was it that his name seems to be a name that many people don’t know?”

While political energy remains low, the Department of Homeland Security continues to be a lethal force. On Tuesday morning, a man in Florida running from immigration officers was struck by a semi-truck, marking the third time a person had been killed during an encounter with immigration agents within a week.

Violence has surged within detention centers as well. Within the first 500 days of Trump’s second term, 52 people have died in ICE custody, the highest mortality rate in over a decade, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights. On Monday, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man died in a private prison used for ICE detention in Georgia in an apparent case of medical neglect.

Meanwhile, ICE has punished protesters who object to its brutality with more violence. Physicians for Human Rights and the UC Berkeley Law School’s Human Rights Center documented 412 incidents between June 2025 and May 2026 where law enforcement agents used excessive force or chemical weapons on ICE protesters, children, journalists, legal observers, and bystanders.

Dr. Rohini Haar, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at UC Berkley’s School of Public Health and lead author of the use-of-force study, said lawmakers should not allow these attacks to be met with “impunity” just because there is less impending political pressure.

“Do not ignore this just because it’s less newsworthy,” said Haahr, who is also a medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights. “You’re going to keep getting [violence] when no one is held accountable.”

[

Related

It’s Time for Concrete Action on ICE. Sadly, We Have the Democrats.](https://theintercept.com/2026/01/26/alex-pretti-democrats-abolish-ice/)

Progressives, including Ramirez, have criticized their colleagues for not anticipating that the violence would continue once DHS funding was fully restored. In April, House Democrats agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security under a two-track model that would immediately fund most of the Department and push ICE and Border Patrol funding through a separate process that would not require any Democratic support. In June, Republicans voted to fund ICE and Border Patrol to the tune of $70 billion.

“I said this a couple of weeks ago, that I would not be surprised if, when ICE funding started up again, we would start to see more civilian deaths at the hands of ICE,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who did not co-sponsor Melt ICE, told reporters on Monday. “And that’s exactly what has happened.”

The Intercept asked whether the congresswoman planned to co-sponsor Ramirez’s legislation and was directed to her public statements on the DHS funding measure. The Intercept also reached out to Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, D-Texas., who is also not a co-sponsor of the legislation, to ask if he planned to co-sponsor the bill in the wake of the Texas shooting, but did not receive a response.

Although anger has bubbled up again in protests across the country, the public’s attention does appear to have waned since its peak in January after federal immigration agents fatally shot Good and Pretti.

Manisha Sinha, an American history professor at the University of Connecticut, said there are several potential reasons for lowered attention on Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero’s deaths. The Trump administration has changed its tactics to deemphasize cities where protesters and local leaders could jointly resist immigration enforcement, as they did in Minnesota. And, undoubtedly, the fact that “Alex Pretti and Renee Good were citizens” added to the public outrage over their killings, said Sinha.

Without the same intensity of pressure from voters as there was in winter and spring, Ramirez said many of her colleagues are not motivated to take principled positions on immigration that might anger their deep-pocketed donors. But she said she understands that people may also be wary of risking their lives while members of Congress go about their business as usual.

“People in the street don’t feel like the members on the inside really have the pulse of what’s happening to them, and that frankly they’re fucking tired,” Ramirez said. “And I hate that I have to ask them to keep showing up. But knowing this body, I know that this body only moves from pressure.”

The post In the Wake of Fatal ICE Shootings, Democrats Drag Their Feet appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

Last week, the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025, published a report titled "Title IX's Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity." As its title suggests, the report---which came only days after the Supreme Court upheld laws banning trans women from women's sports---takes aim at Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bars sex discrimination in schools receiving federal funds and was directly responsible for the creation of women's sports programs in K-12 schools.

Its author, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow and Boise State University political science professor Scott Yenor, chooses to introduce the topic in a familiar way: transphobia. Here, he opens with a nod to the right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding Imane Khelif, writing that "in 2024, a Tunisian man defeated a Chinese woman for the Olympic women's boxing gold medal." Already, he gets the facts wrong: Imane Khelif is Algerian, and she isn't transgender, but regardless, he presses on and uses Khelif to call for laws that "define and uphold the physical differences between men and women."

However, Yenor is merely using the topic of trans athletes---one that right-wing groups have manufactured as a way to get many Americans comfortable with discriminatory policies---as a springboard for his true target: women's sports, and more specifically, "the deeper feminist settlement that has governed athletics for decades." This feminism, he writes, aimed to make women "more independent and even dominant and less deferential and less oriented toward motherhood and traditional female graces," and as a result, "Title IX evolved from a seemingly modest anti-discrimination statute into a powerful engine of feminist social engineering, complete with proportionality mandates."

His central argument is simple: Title IX has created "a prejudice in favor of a male-normed competitive model for women's sports and a prejudice against men's non-revenue programs," and these prejudices "rest on [the] false premise that differences in competitiveness and interest between the sexes are stereotypes to be engineered away." As he clarifies later, he believes that women, when compared to men, are naturally less 'aggressive, assertive, and dominant' and less interested in sports, and therefore, giving men more sporting opportunities isn't discriminatory. Rather, according to Yenor, the discrimination lies in giving women equality, as Title IX's mandates of equal spending and parity in competitive opportunity meant "colleges learned that the safest (and often cheapest) path to compliance was cutting men's non-revenue programs rather than adding women's teams or controlling costs in football and men's basketball."

Interestingly, his entire argument essentially reverses the rhetoric that Republicans have employed when banning trans athletes. There, they argue that trans athletes should get fewer opportunities because they are more competitive and aggressive and that every trans woman who wants to compete is unfairly taking an opportunity away from a cis woman. But here, it's now cis women who should get fewer opportunities for being less competitive and aggressive and that every cis woman who wants to compete is unfairly taking an opportunity away from a man.

And the irony continues Yenor takes issue with the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Virginia, a 1996 landmark case that struck down policies barring women from US military schools, for 'furthering the war on stereotypes.' Meanwhile, that ruling---and its finding that there are "inherent differences between men and women"---has been used to support anti-trans laws going back to the very first line of the very first anti-trans sports law in the US, Idaho House Bill 500 (2020).

Nevertheless, to account for these purported differences between genders, Yenor proposes that Title IX should instead 'accommodate nature' by doing away with many competitive women's sporting programs and instead "supporting a wide range of non-competitive and lower-intensity activities." And in this final section, he writes the following:

"History and the nature-denying extremism of today's Title IX enforcement compel us to consider basic questions: What goods do women themselves get from sports and physical activity? What goods do men get? What goods does society derive from women's participation? From male participation? Podiums, scholarships, or the cultivation of a conquering spirit are hardly the main concerns for most female athletes. Much less of a concern is having a career in professional sports."

As for the 'goods' in question, Yenor is unequivocal: children. In fact, he spends two-thirds of his answer to these questions on fertility alone:

"Of course, many women enjoy the thrill of competition, as the joy on faces of victorious female athletes shows. Women also benefit from activities that build health, good habits, vigor, bodily toughness, grace, confidence, social connection of teamwork, and beauty. Moderate exercise supports fertility and mental well-being far more reliably than does the high-intensity, elite model of sports, which, as science shows, produces Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) and elevated rates of menstrual disruption in many top-notch female athletes. Between 26 percent and nearly 50 percent of women who exercise intensely stopped having regular menstrual cycles according to several studies. As one recent review of the literature holds, "evidence demonstrates higher rates of menstrual disturbance in elite athletes." High-intensity exercise increases infertility; moderate exercise assists fertility more than any other approach to exercise assists it."

Through this paragraph, Yenor reveals his hand---as well as the fact that the rest of the reasoning he presents may very well be entirely ad hoc. After all, according to his bio on the Heritage Foundation's page, Yenor "writes primarily on the family." Quotes from other conservative figures about him that are listed on the page characterize him as "a student of the hostile forces of feminism and liberals that rip the family apart or prevent families from forming" and as "one of the leading pro-family intellectuals in the country."

Title IX and college sports policy should therefore sit comfortably outside of his area of expertise---unless, of course, he believes this issue concerns family policy. Viewing the report through this lens, his emphasis on replacing the 'high-intensity, elite model of sports' with opportunities that promote 'moderate exercise' (which he defines as including "group fitness classes, dance, yoga, recreational intramurals, hiking clubs, and the like") starts to make more sense, as do his repeated references to the idea that competitive sports make women "less oriented towards motherhood" that are present throughout the report.

As Yenor's report shows, right-wing attacks on women's participation in sports will not remain limited to trans women for much longer. That discourse, ostensibly about 'fairness' and 'safety,' has served to normalize the idea that laws can and should be passed that regulate who qualifies as a woman and what opportunities she has access to. Now, armed with a recent victory at the Supreme Court that upheld those laws, men like Scott Yenor are looking to cash in.

Will America's women let them?

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64905

Over 100 House Democrats on Wednesday voted in favor of an amendment put forward by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to cut $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel, marking a major shift as congressional Democrats grapple with growing skepticism of the US-Israel relationship among their voter base. The amendment would have removed $3.3 billion in […]

From News From Antiwar.com via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64894

As calls for transparency grow, President Donald Trump has waved away the idea of accepting U.S. responsibility for the massacre of schoolchildren in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war — and has suggested, heinously, that photo evidence of U.S. munitions used on the school “are AI.” Asked about a letter from Democrats this week calling for the release of the U.S.

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64897

Two days after a federal immigration agent fatally shot 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, the state's Republican senator, who voted earlier this year to fund US Immigration and Customs Enforcement without requiring reforms, refused to say she regrets the vote.

Prem Thakker of Zeteo News approached Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins at the Capitol on Wednesday with a polite but direct question.

"Hi senator, how are you?" Thakker began. "I was wondering, do you regret giving ICE more money, given the killings, including the one in your state?"

Collins, who was waiting for an elevator with an aide, did not reply, while her staffer asked what outlet Thakker was with before saying the senator had to leave.

As Collins approached the elevator, Thakker repeated the question: "No regrets?"

Watch @prem_thakker ask Sen. Susan Collins if she regrets funding ICE given its recent killings, including of 26-year-old Maine resident Joan Sebastian Guerrero. Collins defends herself, saying it went to bodycams & training. ICE wasn’t wearing bodycams when they killed Guerrero. pic.twitter.com/hl8FYYyBMq
— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) July 15, 2026

The senator did not directly answer the question, but suggested she stood by her vote in April to provide ICE and Customs and Border Protection with $70 billion for the next three years—without agreeing to guardrails Democrats had demanded following the killings of at least four people since the beginning of 2026 and the deaths of dozens of people in ICE detention and during deportation operations in 2025.

She referred to "money I got for body-worn cameras and training"—but as Thakker pointed out, that money didn't stop agents from killing Guerrero on Monday morning.

"They didn't wear cameras though, did they, Senator?" asked Thakker as the elevator doors closed.

Guerrero, who reportedly had legal status in the US and was married with a 3-year-old daughter, was killed in his vehicle Monday morning. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said ICE had been “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal,” and details that have emerged since the shooting suggest Guerrero was not the person agents were looking for.

DHS said Guerrero "attempted to flee the scene" and bullet holes were seen in the windshield of Guerrero's car. ICE agents are trained never to shoot into a moving car, but they have in several recent cases, including the killings of protester Renee Good in Minneapolis in January and immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last week.

Fleeing a scene is also not considered grounds for the use of force, according to the Department of Justice.

Nirav Shah, who is running to be the Democratic US Senate candidate in Maine, noted that Collins' call for ICE to suspend its use of vehicle stops was ineffectual, with President Donald Trump ordering the stops to continue on Wednesday.

"That is the entire measure of her influence in Washington," said Shah. "Sen. Susan Collins can't stop Trump, and she's too weak to stand up to him—period."

"Susan Collins funds ICE and has given them a blank check," he added. "Maine does not need a senator who signs the checks and hopes for the best from Donald Trump. It needs one who will end ICE's rampage and abolish it."

Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson also condemned Collins for helping Trump enact his "deadly, racist, and authoritarian agenda."

"Mainers won't forget," he said.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64154

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***Short summary of updates:***The legislative season of 2026 in state legislatures has led to continued degradation of transgender rights across the United States. Meanwhile, nationwide, federal policies continue to lead to enormous legal difficulties for transgender people. In the latest update, Idaho becomes the fourth-ever “Do Not Travel” state for transgender people, and may be the harshest of all such states, where bathroom usage can lead to 5-year prison sentences. Meanwhile, South Carolina expanded its bathroom ban to universities, causing its risk to rise to “Worst Laws Passed.” For youth, the map remains relatively unchanged, with Idaho likewise elevating to “Do Not Travel.”

About The Map

I have tracked anti-transgender legislation for 5 years. Every day, I’ve gotten messages from worried people wondering how they are supposed to assess their risk of staying in their home state. The messages range from parents of trans youth wondering if their children will be taken from them to trans teachers wondering if their jobs will be safe in coming years. Sometimes people just want to know if there is a safer state they can move to nearby.

I created the legal risk map specifically to help answer that question. Now more than ever, it is a question that needs answering for so many transgender people facing forced medical detransition, arrests for using the bathroom, bans on the use of our names, pronouns, and identification documents, and many other curtailments of our rights to exist in public life.

Methodology

The methodology used is primarily qualitative, with a scoring-rubric element for the worst bills. Part of the methodology is my own expert assessment of laws, of which I am well equipped to do. I have read thousands bills targeting transgender people in the last few years. I have watched hundreds of hours of hearings on anti-trans legislation and am fully aware of all of the players nationally as well as where they are making their pushes against trans rights. I have followed the vote count and regularly talk to activists on the ground in each state. I am looking at how similar states are moving in their legislative cycles. Lastly, I watch for statements by governors and bill drafts to see if the Republican party in various states seems to be pushing anti-trans legislation heavily - you can see many examples of such legislation in this newsletter.

In terms of actual laws, I keep a rubric of the various types of laws that target transgender people. For transgender youth, the most concerning laws are those that prohibit gender-affirming care and mandate medical detransition. Additionally, bathroom bans, laws that rigidly define sex as binary, and restrictions on social transition are other key factors that negatively impact a state’s ranking. For transgender adults, the primary legislative concerns include adult gender affirming care bans, bathroom bans, prohibitions on drag specifically aimed at trans people and pride events, restrictions on changing birth certificates and drivers licenses, and laws that end legal recognition for trans people entirely. These factors play a significant role in how I assess and rank a state’s legislative risk.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

The Adult Trans Legal Risk Assessment Map

Moves in this update: Idaho (Worst Laws → Do Not Travel), South Carolina (High Risk → Worst Laws)

• Summary of updates: Idaho has moved into the highest risk level on this map, “Do Not Travel.” This is not an move ever taken lightly. However, with the passage of Idaho’s felony bathroom ban with up to 5 year prison sentences, the state firmly belongs in this category. Though a lawsuit has partially blocked the law, the law remains in effect anywhere a gender neutral or family restroom exists, meaning transgender people must search for a gender-neutral restroom or else they might risk a felony in Idaho. In South Carolina, the bathroom ban there has been expanded to colleges and universities, raising the risk level in the state.

Nationwide Risk: Worst Policies In Effect. The wave of executive orders targeting transgender Americans has reshaped the national landscape in chilling fashion. These directives have forced nonprofits to scrub the word “transgender” from their websites, stripped transgender history from the Stonewall National Monument, withdrawn federal funding from schools and hospitals that recognize or research transgender people, and imposed new barriers to obtaining passports and legal documents. The result is a sweeping, nationwide rollback of rights and recognition for transgender adults. For international visitors, the risk is even more severe: citing the sharp escalation in legal and bureaucratic targeting, several countries have issued travel advisories. Following suit, I’ve designated the United States a “Do Not Travel” zone for non-essential travel for transgender people without a full understanding of the legal environment, due to the heightened risk of visa revocation, denial of entry, or detention.

Here are the categories and where each state falls:

• Do Not Travel (FL, ID, KS, TX): Three states have earned “Do Not Travel” advisories: Florida, Kansas, and Texas. Kansas bathroom ban allows for everyday citizens to seek out transgender people in bathrooms and sue them for large sums of money, creating a bounty hunter system in the state. Meanwhile, Idaho’s ban can result in 5-year prison sentences. Florida has a law that allows for the arrest of transgender people for using bathrooms according to their gender identity and another policy targets transgender people’s drivers licenses. Florida has also put into effect a policy that says trans people “misrepresenting” their gender on their drivers license could be guilty of fraud and has begun erasing Pride crosswalks across the state. Local LGBTQ+ orgs as well as HRC have issued travel advisories for the state. This analysis likewise concurs with such a rating. In Texas, the state is not only ignoring court ordered drivers license changes for trans adults, but it is also creating a database of people attempting to make such changes. A new statewide bathroom ban that has already resulted in detainment makes the state the Do Not Travel on this list.

• The Worst States (AL, AR, IA, IN, LA, MS, OH, OK, ND, SC, SD, TN, UT, WV, WY): These states have passed deeply troubling legislation targeting transgender adults in extremely harmful new ways. Utah has a bathroom ban for transgender adults. Alabama has also passed a Don’t Say Gay bill that includes a bathroom ban on college campuses. Many states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and others listed in this category have gone so far as to legislatively erase transgender people, effectively removing any legal rights associated with their gender identities. Other states, such as North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, prohibit any changes to birth certificates, forcing trans people to out themselves when showing their documents. These states also could start targeting adult gender affirming care - Florida has already done so, banning 80% of such care.

• High-Risk States (GA, MO, NE, NH, MT): All of these states have passed anti-trans laws, but they haven’t reached the same level of severity as the worst states. Missouri for example, prohibits gender-affirming care for incarcerated adults as well as transgender youth and have seen new laws proposed this cycle going even further. Nebraska’s governor has issued an executive order ending legal recognition of trans people. Additionally, some of these states have laws that permit the refusal of medical care to LGBTQ+ individuals on religious grounds. Although each of these states has laws targeting transgender adults, none have done so to the extent of the worst states. Montana is a special case on this list, in that it has passed laws that would normally place it among the worst states, but those laws have repeatedly been blocked in court.

• Moderate-Risk States (AK, KY, NC): These states have either passed one or two laws aimed at transgender adults or have enacted multiple laws targeting transgender youth, or are advancing negative laws quickly. For states focusing on trans youth, history shows they are more likely to introduce anti-trans legislation for adults in subsequent years. Most of these states are under Republican control, either through supermajorities in the legislature or Republican governorships. Many have enacted “Don’t Say Gay” provisions, which frequently result in the banning of transgender teachers. Additionally, many have passed religious refusal rights bills. However, most of these states have either not yet ventured into anti-trans adult legislation or have only passed milder forms of such laws.

• Low-Risk States (AZ, DE, ME, MI, NV, PA, VA, WI, DC): These states have largely refrained from targeting transgender adults, although they haven’t taken extraordinary steps to protect adult transgender rights either. For example, Arizona and Virginia have enacted anti-trans policies affecting youth but, due to state-specific factors, appear unlikely to extend such policies to adults. Conversely, Michigan, and Nevada have enacted fairly robust non-discrimination policies but fall short in ensuring healthcare equity and providing protections for incarcerated transgender individuals. Maine has increased in risk due to capitulation to Trump over sports bans in the University of Maine system. While these states generally offer a safer environment for transgender adults, they stop short of going the extra mile to make their jurisdictions unequivocally safe places to reside. In the case of the District of Columbia, it may fall under attack from Congress and executive actions, meaning it can no longer be considered “most protective.” This most recently was manifested with the DC House bathroom ban.

• Most Protective States (CA, CO, CT, HI, IL, MA, MD, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA): These states have gone above and beyond in safeguarding the rights and well-being of transgender individuals, making them highly desirable places to live for those in search of security. States like Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have enacted comprehensive health insurance laws that cover facial hair removal and an expanded range of medical procedures. Each of these states offers refugee protections for individuals fleeing more repressive states with anti-trans laws. Care is not only supported but also enjoys legal reinforcement from the state, ensuring accessibility as long as such treatments remain lawful at the national level. These states are the most likely to counteract federal anti-trans regulations.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

The Youth Trans Legal Risk Assessment Map

Moves in this update: Idaho (Worst Laws → Do Not Travel)

• Summary of updates: This map quite closely resembles the last map published with respect to youth. No state in the United States can be considered low-risk for transgender youth, due to federal policies and mass capitulation to Trump’s threats with respect to sports and healthcare bans. Meanwhile, a recent Title IX SCOTUS decision raises the risk of anti-trans policies in blue states in the coming months. As such, the country remains between Moderate Risk and Do Not Travel depending on the state.

Nationwide Risk: Worst Laws Passed. A wave of executive orders has targeted transgender youth in sweeping and extreme ways. Nonprofits have halted services for trans youth, healthcare providers face federal bans via executive orders, and teachers have been warned they could be investigated for “practicing medicine without a license” simply for using a trans student’s chosen name. The cumulative effect is a chilling rollback of basic recognition and care—one that signals even more punitive measures may be on the horizon.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

From Erin In The Morning via This RSS Feed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/democrats-fight-left-dsa/687839/

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63712

At the Marxism 2026 conference in Toronto last month, Ian Angus spoke at a release event for his new book, Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth System, out now from Monthly Review Press.

From MR Online via This RSS Feed.