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All articles

- For ‘Love and Knowledge’: On the Frontlines of Trans Cyberspace

- Slain Nurse Smeared by Anti-Trans Right, Ballot Test in Washington State, and a Court Victory

- TWIBS: English Academics Whine About Free Speech

- The Death of Renee Good, Queer Woman

- Dylan Mulvaney’s Broadway Debut Rattles Bigots

JAN 27, 2026, 8:00 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

For ‘Love and Knowledge’: On the Frontlines of Trans Cyberspace

The moderators of trans forums, many of them volunteers, have demonstrated remarkable resilience and resourcefulness over four decades and multiple digital eras.

by Alys S Brooks

Before TikTok, Tumblr or LiveJournal, before widespread computer ownership or the web itself, trans people were connecting online, allowing them to talk to people like themselves.

For many, this was the first time. The earliest forums offered an invaluable space for people whose innate sense of being trans clashed with the prevailing culture. But there, in cyberspace, they built community and friendships.

The moderators of these trans forums, many of them volunteers, have demonstrated remarkable resilience and resourcefulness over four decades and multiple digital eras, often leaving themselves emotionally vulnerable and susceptible to burnout.

It was motivated, as one said, by love and the pursuit of knowledge.

The earliest forums were rudimentary, requiring the user to manually establish a connection, far from today’s immediacy of picking up a phone and posting. Once connected, information came in at a trickle. Sharing a selfie, trans-themed art, or a photo of updated ID, if it were even possible, was an elaborate process of scanning images, crushing them into tiny but hopefully recognizable proportions, and repeating steps when your connection failed or your computer crashed.

Yet the conversations then had a feel that is quite familiar today: celebrations of milestones, declarations of identity and denunciations of transphobia.

For the people running them, there was a lot of labor and out-of-pocket expense. “I’m racking up $200 in $300 bills each month being on the service to host chats,” Gwendolyn Anne Smith recalled of her time as a volunteer America Online moderator.

A through line during this period, and a source of some tension, has been the evolution of descriptive definitions. The rise of the internet coincided with the emergence of terms like non-binary and transgender as well as the expansion of the acronym LGB to LGBTQ+.

“These battles about that kind of – who belongs and how do we define this – have always been happening,” said Avery Griff-Dame, whose 2023 book “The Two Revolutions,” recounts trans people’s intertwined history with the digital world. “It’s just on contemporary platforms they’re much more focused on specific language. Using language to help define an in and an out.”

Our communities, especially early on, were also shaped by who had access to a computer. While robust statistics on internet users are hard to come by, especially users of specific online communities, the people who had the resources to use digital forums early on were “very white and very middle class,” Griff-Dame said.

Census data published in 1989 indicated that families making more than $75,000 were roughly nine times as likely to have a computer at home as those making less than $15,000; white families were twice as likely to have them as Black families. Media outlets took note of the trend, and politicians embraced the term “digital divide.”

As technology improved, barriers came down but didn’t disappear.

Jamie Fenton, a former system administrator for the enduring online space TG Forum, noted that scanners became cheap enough in the 1990s that many users could upload photos. The digital divide shrank in subsequent surveys, although Black, Hispanic, and low-income families remained slightly less likely to have a computer or internet connection at home.

As Barriers Fell

It was during this time that America Online emerged as a leading proprietary service, enabling users to form chat rooms on the fly under the banner People Connection and providing a burgeoning array of permanent rooms with paid staff such as The Gay and Lesbian Community Forum. The forum would have a recurring Gender Conference, although users had to tiptoe around AOL’s filters that censored “transgender,” “transsexual” and other terms. Getting that restriction lifted required some lobbying by  Smith and other members of the so-called America Online Gender Group.

Article in TV Tapestry describing the exact keystrokes to connect to the Gay and Lesbian Community forum in order to participate in the Gender Conference, a scheduled online meeting for transgender AOL users.

It meant “explaining we just wanted a place to chat, as opposed to their assumption that any discussion of trans issues was inherently sexual,” said Smith, the former AOL moderator. “No, we just want a place where those of us who are trans can decompress about our days just like anywhere else.”

TG Forum was an early website with resources and community participation, and, a little bit later, a chat room. Software to create blogs, host discussions, or publish articles didn’t exist yet, so Fenton wrote the site’s code herself.

While TG Forum ran on the open web, and AOL on a proprietary platform, both had chat rooms that permitted anonymity. A user could observe, leaving virtually no trace. Or pick a screen name and try a new identity with minimal risk—a potentially life-changing opportunity for closeted trans people.

The World Wide Web’s invention in 1989 and its expansion into widespread use just a few short years later would transform these digital spaces for trans people. Early on, the web proved useful for gathering resources. Fenton said she built web pages for various trans groups and, with Cindy Martin and JoAnn Roberts, created a “trans super site,” that included the TG Forum.

In the late 1990s, the forum was archived onto a CD. At the time it provided access for people with sporadic internet, those who wanted to free up the lines, or those with a limited amount of minutes. Today, it’s a snapshot of a particular trans community while it was still growing.

The TG Forum CD, as viewed from an emulated Mac computer of the time.

The CD showcased the community’s breadth—covering name changes, coming out, makeup, photography, trans history, and the emerging transgender rights movement—but also its limitations.

While internet access was growing among all groups, the contributors were mostly white. The nature of the information and community itself also skewed toward MtF transgender people (a label that’s mostly been superseded by “transfeminine”). Transmasculine users were present but rarer. TG Forum once described its FtM resources as “scarce but growing.” Susan’s Place, another popular forum, created by Susan Larson in 1995 and moderated by volunteers, also focused heavily on transfeminine users.

The relative absence of transmasculine views during this period was explored in “The Two Revolutions,” Griff-Dame’s academic account of the parallel rise of the internet and transgender activism. He quotes a writer in an online newsletter, “Surely, it cannot be true that I am the only techno-geek in the FtM world. Why is it, then, that I can find nobody of a like mind on the internet?” Griff-Dame’s research found a growing presence of trans men in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

While trans activism was building momentum during the 1990s and 2000s, trans people remained relatively invisible and outside transphobia was less of a concern for online communities. Moderators of trans forums were occupied with other problems, including intracommunity conflict and users eager to exploit systems in an era when online security was in its infancy.

The Web’s Influence

The web was starting to affect existing communities. AOL had created a bridge to an older communication network, Usenet, which hosted groups on myriad topics, including gender and sexuality but brought with it considerable baggage, such as spam. Usenet’s lack of moderation also fostered harsh exchanges, which carried over to transgender and crossdresser forums. Long-time activist Marisa Richmond wrote in 1996 that Usenet discussions were so toxic that she was concerned the vitriol would scare users away.

In the early 2000s, not finding a place that embraced both trans people and their partners, Helen Boyd and her wife Rachel Crowl formed the My Husband Betty forums, named after Boyd’s book. She describes the forums as filling a niche other forums didn’t. There were more partners of trans people and nonbinary people, she said, and less of a focus on transition how-tos that were well-covered by communities like TG Forum and resource-focused sites like Andrea James’s Transgender Map.

“One of the things I found was that a lot of the other advice for trans people was very individual – like, this is how you transition, here’s how you get a carry letter, hormones amounts, all that stuff was very individual,” Boyd said. “Nobody was talking about relationships. We used to say, the holistic trans person.”

Many of these communities no longer exist or are much less prominent. The AOL forums traded hands a few times. The My Husband Betty forums closed in 2019 after facing technical issues. TG Forum lives on but with occasional articles and user posts. Susan’s Place, which narrowly avoided closing in November 2025, retains a large user base but is less central than it was.

Since then, trans people have continued to build new communities. While online trans communities have long formed on large commercial platforms, these new communities are now even more likely to be on commercial platforms today. While this eliminates the need for coding a platform from scratch like Fenton did or even installing and configuring existing forum software like Crowl did, it also means the community has less direct control.

It also poses a question about historical preservation. Smith said that it would be technically possible to recreate enough of AOL’s software to bring these communities back to life, but the attempt she was aware of has fizzled out. While less of a technical lift on Discord—custom archival tools already exist—it is not as straightforward as it is for many websites. For Rae, who runs a community on Discord, The Trans Crossroads, that’s not necessarily a disadvantage.

“I do not view this as something that is something likely to be preserved. Honestly, I’m kind of OK with that,” said Rae, who asked not to be fully identified because of privacy concerns. ” Normally, I’m really into preserving as much history as possible. But, you know, in our case, [it’s] for a couple reasons. First the anonymity and second the fact that if our goal is to get information to people, the information gets out of date.”

Boyd and Crowl also opted to favor privacy over preservation. While web scrapers can preserve that vintage of web forum, very little of the My Husband Betty forums is on the Wayback machine, as she and Crowl made the decision early on to require a login.

Similarly, Fenton suggested that chats being more ephemeral prevented old conflicts and out-of-context messages from resurfacing. While it was feasible to keep text logs, few people did.

Most of the moderators and administrators I talked to experienced burnout or witnessed it in others. Often the cure was the same—time off. Research, much of it focused on either volunteers on modern communities like Reddit or paid moderators on sites like Facebook, found psychological distress has been common.

The churn of technology and our emerging visibility has meant our online communities have disappeared, evolved or been supplanted from decade to decade. Today, many focus more on societal issues, which speaks to the enduring relevance of our online communities. To those moderating trans communities of the present and future, Boyd has some advice.

"Yeah, I would say, burnout is easy,” Boyd said. “Do it out of love. I would say that that's what I was motivated by. Love and knowledge."

Alys Brooks is a writer, editor and tutor who has written about reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ issues, voting, and other public policy topics. She is a member of the Trans Journalists Association and lives in a housing co-operative in Madison, Wis., with her cat, Jax.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/love-knowledge-frontlines-trans-cyberspace at Jan 27, 2026, 6:02 PM EST.

JAN 26, 2026, 7:03 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Slain Nurse Smeared by Anti-Trans Right, Ballot Test in Washington State, and a Court Victory

Leading Off: Members of the far right shared fake photos purporting to show Alex Pretti in drag, attempting to make a victim who conservatives don’t like seem trans. An invasive subpoena is quashed. And the Council of Europe may ban conversion therapy. The top story lines.

by Assigned Media

Following ICE’s execution of an observer in Minneapolis, the right wing has already begun spinning lies about the victim, Alex Pretti, to fit their narrative of hate, framing his legal carry of a firearm as an intention to escalate presence into violence and outrageously callling him an “assassin.”

Some on the far right took the smear campaign a step further, using the murder to stoke anti-trans hatred by claiming Pretti was trans or frequently dressed in drag, tying the slain nurse to one of their greatest obsessions.*

Actual trans Minnesotans are showing up to protect their neighbors from the federal government’s onslaught. State Rep Leigh Finke told Assigned Media’s Aly Gibbs last week that she was responding to the myriad needs of Minnesotans under siege

“One of them is helping locate people who have been detained; it's often the case that people don't know how to find a loved one once they have been arrested or detained, Finke said in an interview. “The second part is being responsive to the needs that come to me ... that looks like a lot of things: I get text messages that people need supplies, or that there's ICE coming into the district and to let folks know, it's all kinds of things and it's different a little bit every day.”

Anti-trans activists have pushed through a petition in the state of Washington that aims to ban trans kids kindergarten through grade 12 from participating in school sports and allow parents to opt their children out of courses that would discuss LGBTQ+, religious or political topics.

The initiatives, which seem likely now to be decided by voters in the November general election, stem from a signature campaign led by the right-wing group  Let’s Go Washington. The secretary of state announced late last week that it had certified the signatures.

The Democratic majority leaders in the state legislature have publicly stated they will not hold hearings on the initiatives. “I am certain that we will not be passing either,” Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen said.

The decision means, though, that the initiatives will go directly to voters in November.

Opponents have noted not only the bias behind the initiatives but also the risk of abuse and the forced outing of trans athletes. Demands that only cis athletes be allowed to participate in sports have, in the end, often been paired with enforcement measures such as invasive physical examinations and expensive genetic testing.

Let’s Go Washington has been pushing legislation over the last two years that would harm at-risk minorities, including a previous bill that would have limited student privacy, and another that would have expanded law enforcement’s ability to pursue suspects with little cause.

The Department of Justice has dropped its subpoena demanding the private medical records of all transgender youth patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. This subpoena was one of 20 it issued last year to hospitals that provide gender affirming care to minors.

The subpoena’s withdrawal comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by parents of six patients at the children’s hospital, who argued that it was an invasion of privacy beyond the government’s scope to investigate.

The withdrawal of this bald-faced attempt to intimidate trans kids, families and care providers is the most recent in a series of court actions that reflect the administration’s efforts have been crumbling when met with pushback.

The Council of Europe is set to vote this week to ban the abusive anti-gay practice of conversion therapy, following a committee vote earlier this month where it was unanimously supported.

The language of the resolution lays out the many harms of conversion therapy, describing the practice as commonly involving “verbal abuse, coercion, isolation, forced medication, electric shocks, physical and sexual abuse.” It also states, in no uncertain terms, that conversion therapy has no basis in science and likens it to “torture.”

In a campaign to stop the ban, the anti-trans organization, Sex Matters, one of the groups responsible for pushing the 2025 Scotland ruling that amended the 2010 Equality Act to define sex purely based on assignment at birth, has launched an email campaign to pressure the Council members to vote against the resolution. In response, the Good Law Project has launched its own email campaign, urging members not to listen to the flood of messages based on hate.

A slew of bigoted measures are being proposed in Utah this term but “possibly the most egregious anti-trans bill” was the subject of a rally at the Capitol last week.

The recently introduced House Bill 183 aims to replace legal language using ‘gender’ with ‘sex’, do away with anti-discrimination laws that protect people based on gender identity, block birth certificate changes, restrict trans healthcare workers from working with children, and favor non-supportive parents in custody battles over trans children.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story claimed that Libs of TikTok spread photos purporting to show Alex Pretti in drag. The posts in question included false claims about a different white, bearded anti-ICE Minnesotan wearing drag; the account doesn’t seem to have participated in this smear campaign.

Assigned Media is one hundred percent supported by our readers. Become a member today and get a members-only essay every Thursday.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/alex-pretti-drag-minnesota-trans-chla-lawsuit-more at Jan 27, 2026, 6:02 PM EST.

JAN 23, 2026, 6:00 AM EST | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

TWIBS: English Academics Whine About Free Speech

Controversial though it may be, private citizens telling you they don’t like what you’re saying and don’t want to hear it isn’t an infringement of your right to free speech.

by Aly Gibbs

This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.

Hey! I published something really heavy the other day, and if you haven’t read it, I’d really love it if you did. That said… does anybody else need something downright silly to temper the end of the week? I know I do. Enter: Annoying English professors, lots of bleating about free speech, and unending frivolous litigation!

Let me start by introducing our first annoying professor, Alice Sullivan.

Sullivan, a British sociologist and Professor of Sociology at University College London, is most infamous for leading a very long “independent [government] review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender” in March of 2025 that takes over 200 pages to say, in essence and among other things, transgender people should be listed separately from cisgender people in the UK’s census data for…reasons.

The same day, TransActual UK published a statement that thoroughly rebuts Sullivan’s conclusions by pointing out that this change would make the census data less reliable and invade the privacy of trans Britons, making them less safe. They also point out Sullivan’s inherent biases as a prominent anti-trans activist, and her patron Michelle Donelan’s refusal to “answer any basic questions about the review’s ethics application.”

In comes our second annoying professor, David Gordon at the University of Bristol.

In November of 2024, Gordon invited Sullivan to speak at the University of Bristol. This idea met immediate resistance from the Russell Group’s LGBTQ+ Staff Network, who said Sullivan could cause “real and enduring harm” if she was allowed to speak to students, which… you know, seems like a fair assessment. Gordon was instructed by his superior not to speak out against the LGBTQ+ Staff Network, immediately did so anyway, and was consequently suspended. An investigation into Gordon’s conduct concluded in March of 2025, deciding that he had failed to “follow reasonable management instructions,” and so suspended he remains!

Gordon told anti-trans rag The Telegraph that he’s considering legal action against the university and would like them to “apologise for violating my right to freedom of speech and academic freedom, and not protecting me from discrimination,” which is absolutely laughable. The reason Gordon was suspended was because he violated a reasonable order from his manager at work, which would also happen if your shift leader at McDonald’s told you to mop the bathrooms and you instead dropped trou and went #2 in the lobby.

“I think you should obey reasonable management instructions, such as marking. But being told to not discuss academic issues is just not reasonable,” he added, but frankly, this obviously wasn’t an academic issue. It was an issue of student safety, and the kind of harmful drek the University of Bristol shouldn’t promote.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, the University of Bristol decided to promote that kind of harmful drek last October. Fortunately, it went horrible for Sullivan, who said a “zombie apocalypse” of protesting students disrupted her seminar. She told the BBC that students held up signs saying “Trans Lives Matter,” pulled the fire alarm, and then shouted “shame on you” as she exited the venue.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. There was an uncontrolled demonstration. People literally climbed the walls of the building in order to bang on the windows and howl through megaphones to disrupt the talk,” Sullivan said. “They set off fire alarms several times. In the end we had to decamp to a higher floor of the building. I wasn’t allowed to hang around and talk to people afterwards because that was deemed unsafe, and I discovered afterwards that people had been intimidated and obstructed from coming into the building by protesters.”

As a result of this heinous violation of her free speech (supposedly), Sullivan’s lawyers have informed the university that she will be taking legal action. Perhaps that’s why Gordon, her biggest fan and enabler, is considering suing. Suffice it to say, I don’t believe that demonstrating against a bigoted activist is in any way legally actionable. Certainly not on the part of the university, who are the ones who invited this dweeb to speak in the first place!

My advice to Sullivan and Gordon is simply to take it on the chin. Soldier on and go regurgitate your hateful beliefs somewhere that people actually give a shit.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/twibs-english-academics at Jan 27, 2026, 6:02 PM EST.

JAN 22, 2026, 6:14 AM EST | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

The Death of Renee Good, Queer Woman

The queer community of Minneapolis is dealing with the loss of one of their own as well as seeing their city under seige.

by Aly Gibbs

Be Good

In December, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement began Operation Metro Surge, their mass invasion of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Labeled “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out” by the Department of Homeland Security, Metro Surge soon expanded to encompass the entire state.

On the morning of January 7, Renée Nicole Macklin Good was exercising her constitutional right to observe ICE activities. She briefly blocked a roadway while students were being dropped off at a dual-language elementary school around the corner. ICE likes to target families at schools, abduct children off the street, and even use them as bait in unlawful raids.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Officer Jonathan Ross approached Good’s car and began filming her using his cell phone. Good’s wife Becca followed Ross, filming him in return, until two more ICE agents approached. They issued contradictory commands, telling Good both to exit her vehicle and also to leave the area, while one agent lunged to unlock and open her door. Good turned her wheels to the right and began to move forward, into traffic, when Ross drew his gun and shot her three times, once through the front windshield and twice through the driver’s side window, then angrily proclaimed, “fucking bitch.”

Good’s vehicle accelerated at speed, as often happens when drivers are shot (which is why police are taught not to do this), until it crashed into a parked car and light pole. ICE agents blocked off the scene almost immediately. A man identified himself as a physician and begged the agents to let him check on her; they said, “I don’t care,” and denied him access to Good as she lay dying.

Renée Nicole Macklin Good left behind her wife, her six year old son, and two children from a previous marriage.

The Trump administration hurried to administer propaganda with the aid of mainstream media. CNN made their best effort to smear Good as a troublemaker by connecting her to her son’s school board, which disseminated documents about lawful ICE observation and Constitutional Observer training. CBS, under despicable state propagandist Bari Weiss, reprinted blatant lies from unidentified sources suggesting that Ross was injured in the altercation. Even the New York Times’ analysis of video footage stated in no uncertain terms that Ross was clearly unharmed.

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents began an investigation into Good’s murder the day it happened, but were sidelined by the FBI in less than 24 hours. Next, the Justice Department declared that Jonathan Ross would not be investigated for murdering Renée Good, but that they would be investigating her wife, as well as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Six federal prosecutors resigned their positions as Trump’s Justice Department pressured them to investigate Good’s family. Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, has sued the Trump administration to demand that ICE leave Minnesota.

In the wake of Good’s murder, most outlets barely mentioned her wife, Becca, who watched her die. They made no mention of Good’s queerness, and frequently labeled her son an “orphan,” despite the fact that he still has a mother. They referred to Renée as a widow, despite the fact that she had a wife. Trump himself referred to Becca as Renée’s “friend,” an age-old dog whistle meant to erase her queer identity.

Good’s butch presentation, in particular, drew the ire of conservative rage baiters like Adult Baby Diaper Lover fetishist Matt Walsh, who described both Renée and Becca as “enemies of the people.”

The message was both loud and clear: If you fail to demonstrate proper obeisance to lawless goons sent to terrorize your community, especially if you’re visibly queer, it’s acceptable for angry men to shoot you dead in the street. It’s a promise of violence new to most white Americans, but one that Black and brown Americans are intimately familiar with.

Talking to the Helpers

The Twin Cities have had a trying month, suffice it to say. By far, the most troubling period in the city's recent history, since the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Perry Floyd, Jr., in May of 2020. Jackboot thugs under the command of the federal government are trooping door-to-door, asking after our neighbors. They’re carrying out chemical warfare on observers and protestors, exposing brave people to known abortifacients. They’re forcing drivers off the road, instigating dangerous car accidents, and beating locals for daring to watch them work. They’re occupying hospitals and taking people from emergency rooms, forcing pregnant migrants to ask on social media, “Where is it safe for me to give birth?”

Since I began writing this story, many more terrible things have happened. A man was shot in the leg by ICE, who immediately lied about how it happened. When neighbors arrived to observe the scene, ICE agents deployed tear gas against a family of bystanders and incapacitated their baby in the process. ICE are abducting and beating observers, or openly threatening them. They are denying attorneys access to their detained clients, and now saying they don’t even need a warrant to break into your home and abduct you.

It’s just too much to keep up with. Perhaps that’s by design. Maybe a single human body was not meant to indulge in this much trauma and heartbreak. Feeling overwhelmed, I decided that I needed to talk to people who were meeting this moment in some way, so I spoke to Representative Leigh Finke, a member of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party who represents District 66A in our state legislature. She is, let’s just say, no stranger to Donald Trump’s animus.

“I'm trying to be as helpful to the people in the Twin Cities as I can, and there's a few different ways that usually manifests,” Leigh said when I asked how she’s responding to ICE’s presence in the Cities. “One of them is helping locate people who have been detained; it's often the case that people don't know how to find a loved one once they have been arrested or detained. The second part is being responsive to the needs that come to me ... that looks like a lot of things: I get text messages that people need supplies, or that there's ICE coming into the district and to let folks know, it's all kinds of things and it's different a little bit every day. Making sure I know what I can do, what I should be doing, who I can be sending people to, all of these things are a part of the day-to-day here.

“The queer community, I think that we're on edge. We saw what happened to Renée Good when she was murdered for being in her car in a way that was frustrating to ICE agents, but since then we've continued to see and hear more targeting of people who are visibly queer. Lesbian couples have been getting targeted. This idea of gender-based violence and oppression seems to be a part of how ICE are moving through the world. They are using Renée Good's death as a threat. They are talking to queer people in a manner that targets their bodies, their appearance, their sexual orientation. It's right in front of us, and it's a part of the landscape of violence here. I tell people to take it seriously, to look out for yourself, to look out for each other and know that the people who are doing this will commit acts of violence against you unexpectedly. It was a 40 second encounter that left Renée Good dead.”

I asked Leigh if she had a message for those outside of Minnesota, and she said, “What is happening in Minnesota is much worse than your readers think it is. The pervasiveness of fear and intimidation and violence... it's very difficult to express how deeply it affects the communities that I represent. All across the Cities, all across the state, even Republican districts are getting people kidnapped off the streets. LGBTQ people are at a particular risk ... but really what this is about is protecting our Black and brown neighbors from abduction and deportation, and queer people are gonna fight that, and I'm proud of that fact.”

I also spoke to Kat Rohn, Executive Director of OutFront Minnesota, the state's largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

“I am, like many of us, heartbroken at the horrific tragedy of the death of one of our community members, but also just the ongoing and everyday occurrences of families being ripped apart and our community life being disrupted,” she told me, when I asked how they’re feeling in the wake of all this chaos. “Schools are closed, businesses are closed, everything about our day-to-day life is interrupted by a federal occupation that seems to have no regard for the law and the constitution.

“Organizationally, we're trying to respond in a lot of different ways. That looks like holding a community care space not too long after Renée's murder, and just giving space and support to community members. I came together with a number of our other LGBTQ organizations to draft up a shared statement and calls to action that we published the Friday after Renee's death, and that has now garnered signatures from, like, 75 organizations here within the state, and all the way to national level orgs. That's been something that we have stepped up many times in these moments of crisis; when our Somali communities were being targeted, our organizations put out shared statements of solidarity and support. Again and again, we try to come together as communities to give folks both direction and voice.”

I asked, too, what they’re seeing from other queer and trans folks in our community.

“What we are seeing is that queer and trans folks are deeply intertwined in the work of protecting our communities, and that's been true in and out of this particular moment, but folks are stepping up across different layers of communities in different ways. It's not just organizations and formal groups, it's every layer of our community figuring out how to get involved in some way, whether it's delivering groceries to a neighbor, observing on a street corner, or just figuring out how to touch base with the people around you. Now is a time where that broader sense of community is what's really holding us through a moment of unknown duration.”

I expressed to Kat that, in the last few weeks, I’ve come to understand how people (New Yorkers, for example) develop a sense of pride for their city. She agreed wholeheartedly.

“Minnesotans love to hold a sense of pride about our place and our communities ... I think being really intentional about ensuring that we are talking about our immigrant communities and our friends and neighbors, in this moment, has been crucial. I think it's a demonstration of the strength of solidarity, that our immigrant communities are not standing alone, and our LGBTQ communities don't have to stand alone, either. We've had folks show up for us in times of need, this is a time where we're showing up for our neighbors, and we know that's part of how good organizing happens.”

Where From Here?

I’m not ashamed to tell you that I am so scared. I’ve never been so frightened, for so long, in my entire life, and mine hasn’t exactly been charmed. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, I consult ICE Out to see if anybody’s reported federal agents anywhere near my home. When I’m in the kitchen, I can’t help but look out the window, watching up and down the street for signs of trouble. I prepare myself, mentally and emotionally, to rush outside and document a stranger if they’re being abducted, to ask their name to pass along to legal aid groups, to make sure my neighbors know the trouble has come to our doorstep. I hope I am brave if I’m given the opportunity, but for now, I’ve spent most of the month worrying and crying.

Fortunately, there are heroes beyond counting in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Will Stancil is on the streets chasing ICE agents back to their compound in his Honda Fit every single day. Local business owners all over are telling these Gestapo bastards, in no uncertain terms, that they are not welcome here. Everywhere ICE goes, there are a dozen or more hometown heroes recording, reporting, and blowing whistles; alerting everybody to their presence, making it as difficult as possible for them to do their “jobs.” Many of the local reports on ICE presence are written in Spanish, because the people most likely to be targeted are taking to the streets and delivering the news:

We will not stand idly by while you terrorize and abduct our neighbors. We will not allow you to operate unobstructed. We will not break, even as you turn our city into an active warzone. This is our home. You are not welcome here. Get the fuck out.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/minnesota-under-siege at Jan 27, 2026, 6:02 PM EST.

JAN 21, 2026, 6:00 AM EST | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

Dylan Mulvaney’s Broadway Debut Rattles Bigots

Dylan Mulvaney has been cast as Anne Boleyn in the musical SIX for her Broadway debut next month, shocking hateful losers everywhere.

by Aly Gibbs

I regret to inform you all that Dylan Mulvaney is making headlines once more for, like before, the unforgivable crime of being transgender and existing. Please, if you need to take a moment to process her sins in your heart and mind, I understand… I’ll be waiting for you when you return.

Okay. All better? Let’s proceed.

SIX is a musical about the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives. If you’re unfamiliar, Henry was a brutish dweeb who embraced the Church of England because the pope wouldn’t let him divorce his wives for failing to provide for him a son who could inherit the throne, leading to a spate of annulments and two whole ass beheadings. Now, far be it from me to critique a foreign nation’s domestic policy, but I have to say that seems like an extreme punishment to me!

Well, if you aren’t sent into an apoplectic rage by the existence of Dylan Mulvaney, you’ll be excited to hear that she’s making her Broadway debut as Anne Boleyn in SIX. If you fall into the other camp of apoplectically enraged twerps, I have bad news for you… not only is Mulvaney scheduled to continue existing, she seems to be daring to thrive.

Mulvaney posted to TikTok about her new role on Monday, reviving her Days of Girlhood video blog series, which has followed the general arc that most trans women experience of ceaselessly yapping about their transition for a couple years then getting sick of it because everybody’s being a big fucking weirdo. She explains in this video that her debut will be in February, that estrogen has made her feet smaller, and that most people have been very kind about her taking the job.

There are, of course, the wolves. Mulvaney admits that, because some people have come around to be hateful losers, her impulse was to make a video defending her talent as a performer. “Then I realized, I shouldn’t waste my breath on that,” she says, “because this is a miracle. It’s a miracle for anyone to make it to Broadway … but being a trans person in 2026, when this world is working against us in what feels like every way, for me to be able to step out onto a Broadway stage as Anne Boleyn and perform an iconic historical character’s role in a show that is so rooted in celebrating femininity, I think that’s a miracle.”

It’s a beautiful, stirring message, but again… the wolves. Conservative internet trolls on X harassed the production’s social media account so doggedly that it had to go on lockdown for a period of time, and their Instagram post announcing Mulvaney’s casting had its comments disabled to prevent a deluge of hateful chumps from flooding the announcement with bigotry. Mulvaney is no stranger to online controversy; you’ll probably recall the backlash against Bud Light, bread in a can that impairs your judgment, for gifting her a custom sixer. This debacle led to Kid “Bawitdaba” Rock, writer of such inspired lyrics as, “My name is Kid Rock,” mowing down a case of Bud with an assault rifle, a normal and measured response to nothing important happening.

Listen, I’m not a musical nerd or theater kid. I went a different direction when I was in school (to my detriment, I suspect), and as an adult I’ve only fallen in love with a handful of productions.

My favorite musical is probably Elisabeth, a story sung in a language I don’t even speak, if that tells you anything about me. That said, I agree with Mulvaney when she says this sort of thing is a miracle, and I’m so happy for her and proud of her. She has every right to pursue her joy, and so do all trans people, despite what the powers that be want us to believe. To that end, I’ll leave you with her parting words from the TikTok announcement, a sentiment I have long held and will always echo:

“If there are any queer or trans kids watching, I just want you to know that you can literally do anything. Maybe that’s theater, maybe it’s something different, but do not let anyone take away what brings you joy. You might have to fight really hard for it or go around the long way, but it is so worth it. It might not feel like it, but there are so many people cheering you on, and I am one of them.”

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/mulvaney-on-broadway at Jan 27, 2026, 6:02 PM EST.

Table of Contents

Assigned Media: 2026 Jan 27

All articles

For ‘Love and Knowledge’: On the Frontlines of Trans Cyberspace

Slain Nurse Smeared by Anti-Trans Right, Ballot Test in Washington State, and a Court Victory

TWIBS: English Academics Whine About Free Speech

The Death of Renee Good, Queer Woman

Dylan Mulvaney’s Broadway Debut Rattles Bigots