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- Two Republican Congresspeople Call For Institutionalization Of Transgender People

- Trump's UCLA Settlement Proposal Reveals Massive Anti-Trans Attacks: Students And Faculty Fight Back

- Vance, Miller Announce Crackdowns Left-leaning Nonprofits That Criticized Kirk, Calling Them "Terrorist Networks"

- Boston Children’s Fights Back For Trans Kids: Judge Quashes Trump Subpoena

- Press Conference: No "Transgender" Or "LGBTQ" Symbols Found At Kirk's Shooting

- Anti-Trans Amendments Added To "Must-Pass" Military Bill In House

- We Must Not Posthumously Sanitize Charlie Kirk's Hateful Life

- Oklahoma Student Play About Shakespearean Theatre Shut Down Over Gender Laws

- "Positive Depictions" Of Trans People Banned In Alabama State Libraries Proposal

- Second Judge Rules Trump Trans Passport Ban Likely Unconstitutional "Under Any Standard Of Review"

- House HHS Appropriations Bill Would Devastate Trans Adult Healthcare Nationwide

- DOJ Reportedly Uses Anti-Trans Slur In Call To Disarm Trans Americans

- Creator Of The Trans Flag Is Fleeing The US Due To LGBTQ Persecution

- Dem Congressman Ro Khanna Defends UK Anti-Trans Activist Arrested For Calling For Violence Against Trans People

Two Republican Congresspeople Call For Institutionalization Of Transgender People

ERIN REED | SEP 17, 2025, 12:11 PM EDT | SOURCE

Representatives Nancy Mace and Ronny Jackson both called for the institutionalization of transgender people On Tuesday.

Left: Nancy Mace // Creative Commons // Gage Skidmore, Right: Ronny Jackson // Public Domain

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing—committed by a suspect who notably was not transgender—conservative leaders have seized the moment to escalate their war on LGBTQ+ people. Vice President JD Vance and Stephen Miller used the death to demand the dismantling of NGOs critical of Kirk. Far-right influencer Matt Walsh openly called for executions of those he branded “LGBTQ+ terrorists.” And now, two sitting members of Congress have crossed a new threshold, explicitly calling for the institutionalization of transgender people—an escalation even by today’s standards.

First, South Carolina representative Nancy Mace, who has a history of vehement opposition to transgender people in congress, called for the institutionalization of transgender people in a street interview where she hurled slurs at the community. She first stated of the shooter’s partner, “It was a transgender… It was a tranny.” When she was asked how she would feel if she were called names the way she calls transgender people, she said “these people are violently ill and should be in a straight jacket with a hard steel lock on it.”

Then, on Newsmax, Representative Ronny Jackson, former White House Physician and Texas Congressman, was asked if “bringing back mental institutions could be on the table.” He responded by saying that transgender people have “legitimate psychiatric issues… we have to do something about this, we have to treat these people, we have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet and we can’t let them communicate with one another. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus. This is a cancer that is spreading across this country.” He also stated in another portion of the interview that transgender people are “a group of domestic terrorists” that “have been bred by the progressives and the liberal media.”

The rhetoric among far-right influencers and financiers has only intensified since the killing of Charlie Kirk. Elon Musk amplified a post to 21 million people on his platform calling for transgender women to be institutionalized “for a long time, some of them indefinitely,” adding himself that “the truth is so awful that they murder to keep the lie” of their gender identity. Laura Loomer urged that the transgender rights movement be declared a “terrorist movement.” Matt Walsh labeled the killing “left-wing LGBT terrorism” and went further, demanding that “the terrorists and their helpers and funders” be “arrested, prosecuted, and put to death.”

These calls don’t emerge in a vacuum. Institutionalization was once a favored tool for erasing transgender people from public life, a way to disappear them rather than recognize their humanity. For sitting members of Congress to revive that rhetoric marks a dangerous escalation. The parallel is just as clear abroad: in Russia, LGBTQ+ movements have been designated “extremist” to justify bans on supportive NGOs and erase entire communities. That is the same playbook Vice President JD Vance and President Trump appeared to nod toward this week—Vance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Trump in a press conference—when they floated targeting NGOs under RICO charges for political dissent.

There is no evidence that transgender people are “violent” or “terroristic.” The data is unambiguous: the vast majority of killings in the United States are carried out by cisgender men. Even in the case of Charlie Kirk’s death, a cisgender white pulled the trigger. Yet in the rush to manufacture a narrative, the far right seized on the fact that his roommate and romantic partner was reportedly transitioning—ignoring that she refused to destroy evidence and instead turned text messages over to police. That detail doesn’t fit the story they want to tell. Instead, they continue to pin every act of violence they can on transgender people, exploiting a tragedy to escalate their campaign of fear and extremism.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/two-republican-congresspeople-call at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Trump's UCLA Settlement Proposal Reveals Massive Anti-Trans Attacks: Students And Faculty Fight Back

S. BAUM | SEP 16, 2025, 1:28 PM EDT | SOURCE

It&#8217;s not only students and faculty who have something to lose&#8212;countless doctors, trans youth, and families could see health care vanish.

Photo by tommao wang on Unsplash

A historic billion-dollar settlement with the federal government could erode civil rights for trans students, faculty, and patients at the University of California - Los Angeles and its health centers. Now, community advocates are calling for the university system’s governing body—the Board of Regents—to hold the line against these sweeping threats, though some worry the Board is showing signs that it is prepared to make a deal with the devil.

Over 1,600 members of the University of California community signed an open letter, including renowned queer scholar and UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler, calling on the university system to resist Trumpian efforts to rebuild UCLA “in a conservative image,” as it was put by the Los Angeles Times. Federal officials are demanding discrimination against transgender students in bathrooms, in housing, and on sports teams, and seeking to strip trans youth of life-saving, evidence-based care.

Save UC Trans Healthcare—an informal group that describes itself as “UC faculty, staff, students and community members defending gender-affirming care”—penned the open letter condemning the Board’s apparent willingness to cede ground to the Trump Administration. The initiative was also promoted by the professors’ union, the UCLA Faculty Association.

A care stoppage at UCLA’s gender clinics could be catastrophic. It is the second-largest hospital system in the state; UCLA runs five hospitals and nearly 300 community clinics.

As one California parent of UCLA gender clinic patients told Erin in the Morning, families “are afraid, scared, and wanting to protect their kids.”

“We hope that the UC Regents are in our corner so that UCLA remains safe, supportive and protected by the university community,” the parent said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity due to personal safety concerns.

The Times obtained a preliminary copy of the proposed settlement from the Trump Administration’s Office for Civil Rights, which fined the school $1.2 billion over supposed “civil rights violations” against white people, cisgender people, and pro-Israel activists.

If the university complies, this could mean the institution will “make a public statement declaring that transgender people’s identities are no longer recognized,” cease “gender-affirming care for minors at medical facilities,” and grant government access to “‘all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement’ not protected by attorney-client privilege,” the Times reports. This would be a monumental assault on the civil rights, medical care and privacy of hundreds of thousands of Californians—students, staff, patients, doctors and faculty. It evokes painful scenes from the McCarthyist witch hunts of the 1950s, which included the overhaul of academic freedoms and the mass purge of accused LGBTQ people from public life.

Governor Gavin Newsom, who has come under fire for his repeated attempts to break bread with anti-trans fascists and torpedo LGBTQ civil rights legislation, condemned the move as “extortion.” Many of the regents are gubernatorial appointees, including by Newsom, whose terms run well into the 2030s. The UC Board of Regents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The University of California (UC) is signaling that they are willing to use the elimination of gender-affirming and trans healthcare as a bargaining chip in negotiations over Trump’s unlawful revocation of $584 million in federal grants and [the] unprecedented threat of a $1 billion fine based on falsehoods,” reads the open letter. “These efforts to eliminate gender-affirming care for trans people are rooted in vengeance and dogma, not in science.”

“Yet, instead of fighting in court for the reinstatement of research funding that the Trump Administration has illegally frozen,” the letter continues, “the UC Regents have begun negotiating with the federal government behind closed doors, and have made no commitment to preserve gender-affirming care or to reject any of the federal government’s anti-trans demands.”

The letter notes that lawsuits have been, at least in part, successful at throwing a wrench into Trumpian encroachment onto campuses and care centers.

However, “when other universities have negotiated rather than legally challenging these demands, the settlements have been devastating for trans healthcare and educational access,” the letter says.

For example, Brown University in Rhode Island and Columbia University in New York seemingly sought to appease the current Administration by capitulating, leading to many trans youth being stripped of evidence-based, life-saving health care. It has also led to discriminatory policies against its own trans students, segregating their access to housing, locker rooms, sports teams, and bathrooms. Prior to Trump’s second term in the Oval Office, students in Florida also saw New College in Sarasota—once a beacon for queer communities and progressive politics—dismantled by the state’s far-right Governor Ron DeSantis, who hand-picked replacements for its faculty and staff, stacking it with right-wing zealots. He also requested trans patient data from a dozen state-funded, university-adjacent health clinics.

Meanwhile, mass subpoenas have been used to terrorize university-affiliated health care systems that treat trans youth, casting wide-reaching nets to dredge up as much personal information as possible about doctors and patients. But some—including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Boston Children’s Hospital—have fought back with promising results. A Massachusetts judge recently quashed a subpoena for sensitive information about trans patients—including the names and addresses of minors—finding that the true purpose of the subpoena was not to investigate unlawful behavior but “to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect GAC within its borders, to harass and intimidate BCH to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.”

Advocates are also calling on members of the community to voice opposition to any capitulation at the Board meetings on September 16 and 17, at the University of California - San Francisco. Public comment will take place on Tuesday, September 16 at 3:00 p.m. and Wednesday, September 17 at 8:30 a.m.

“The capitulation of one of the largest healthcare systems in the state will facilitate attacks on other UC and non-UC healthcare systems,” the letter says. “Given the national leadership of UC Health and the State of California in gender-affirming care, UC’s betrayal and dismantling of gender-affirming care would risk unraveling care across the country.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trumps-ucla-settlement-proposal-reveals at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Vance, Miller Announce Crackdowns Left-leaning Nonprofits That Criticized Kirk, Calling Them "Terrorist Networks"

ERIN REED | SEP 15, 2025, 6:23 PM EDT | SOURCE

The administration announced that it would target nonprofits who were critical of Kirk, going as far as to name the Ford Foundation and Open Society after an article criticized Kirk at The Nation.

Left: Stephen Miller // Creative Commons // Gage Skidmore. Right: JD Vance // Creative Commons // Gage Skidmore

On Monday, JD Vance took over a special edition of the Charlie Kirk Show following the death of its namesake. Framed as a tribute, the broadcast quickly became a vehicle for announcing sweeping new crackdowns. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller used the segment to label certain left-leaning nonprofits “terrorist networks” that push “messaging designed to trigger and incite violence.” Vice President Vance then confirmed the administration would target “the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” singling out the Ford Foundation and Open Society for the role he claimed they played in The Nation publishing an article that accurately described Charlie Kirk as an “unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist.”

“We are going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” said JD Vance while interviewing Stephen Miller.

“We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification. Posting people’s addresses, combining that with messagings designed to trigger and insight violence. And the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence, it is a vast domestic terror movement. And with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make American safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” responded Miller.

Later in the same broadcast, Vance zeroed in on a Nation article by Elizabeth Spiers titled “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning.” What drew his ire was Spiers’s description of Kirk as an “unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist”—a description backed by Kirk’s own words. Rather than engage the substance, Vance lashed out at the Ford Foundation and Open Society, blaming them for the piece and putting both nonprofits in the administration’s crosshairs. He then escalated further, declaring in a fiery monologue that “there can be no unity” with citizens who dared to criticize Kirk in the wake of his death.

“To state the obvious, I was not paid by the Ford Foundation or Open Society to write the column, which is what Vance is alleging and he's saying he is going after those groups,” Spiers wrote on Bluesky in response to his remarks.

Hours later, Trump used a press conference to escalate the threat. He floated once again the idea of designating “Antifa” a terrorist organization and said he was exploring RICO charges against “some of the people you’ve been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.” He added: “These aren’t protests, these are crimes they are doing.”

Later, the New York Times confirmed that the administration was reviewing various ways they can further crack down on left-leaning non-profits, stating in one report, “On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.”

The weaponization of laws against non-profits is something that Republicans have been exploring for some time. In late 2023, Republicans in Florida heavily pushed a bill that would have essentially outlawed LGBTQ+ groups from being considered nonprofits. Though this provision did not pass, it was not the last effort to target nonprofits, especially LGBTQ+ nonprofits. In March, an executive order attempted to strip Public Service Loan Forgiveness from nonprofits supporting gender affirming care for trans youth. Likewise, many nonprofits have seen federal grant dollars for political reasons, such as hospitals and private universities. Now, we could see Trump further weaponize these threats to target any number of nonprofits it judges is responsible for “fomenting violence” with what it claims will be RICO charges or domestic terrorism support, both of which would be legally dubious.

The latest escalation tracks closely with similar steps taken by Vladimir Putin in Russia to target nonprofits and LGBTQ+ organizations and other left-leaning NGOs in recent years. In 2016, the country banned NGOs deemed a threat to public order by creating a new “undesireable” label. In 2023, the country declared LGBTQ+ organizations to be “extremist” in nature, closely tracking with some of the rhetoric used by the administration and its supporters in the wake of Kirk’s killing.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/vance-miller-announce-crackdowns at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Boston Children’s Fights Back For Trans Kids: Judge Quashes Trump Subpoena

S. BAUM | SEP 14, 2025, 11:23 AM EDT | SOURCE

Around 2,000 BCH employees and untold numbers of patients were targeted by the DOJ. A judge just told them, &#8220;No.&#8221;

Google Street View

A judge has dismissed a hospital subpoena sent out by the Department of Justice as part of its nationwide crackdown on gender-affirming care—a notable first, as per Reuters.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun slammed the DOJ in a Sept. 9 ruling, penned in response to a subpoena of Boston Children’s Hospital earlier this summer alongside nearly two dozen other purported providers of legal, evidence-based, trans-friendly health care. The DOJ asserted they were investigating BCH over “false claims” and “unlawful off-label promotion” of puberty blockers and hormones for transgender people, which would hypothetically violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).

But Joun denounced what he painted as a politically, rather than legally, motivated attack. The federal government failed to present even “an iota of suspicion” that BCH is actually engaging in fraudulent or off-label billing practices, Joun writes. “[I]t cannot use its subpoena power to go on a fishing expedition.”

While this does not mean the DOJ investigation will come to a hard stop, it does mean its capacity to go after individuals at BCH has been, at least for now, severely stymied. It also sends a powerful message: Institutions and officials have the power to throw a wrench in the systems that are hell-bent on attacking transgender people, if and when they have the audacity to do it.

In June, the Department issued a public memo announcing that it would prioritize prosecuting the health care providers of trans people with “all available resources.” That same day, the agency issued a subpoena to BCH for a wide range of sensitive patient details, including everything from procedural billing codes to the names and addresses of transgender patients. It also subpoenaed “the personnel files of nearly all 2,000 individuals who work for BCH in any capacity, not limited to their employment as it relates to [gender-affirming care].”

Health care systems that provide treatment to transgender people have faced an onslaught of harassment and violence. At BCH, this includes bomb threats, death threats, phone calls, emails, social media posts, mail, and even abusive messages submitted through the hospital’s online appointment system, the Sept. 9 document says.

The DOJ denied any wrongdoing. Officials posited that they “would not have issued the subpoena unless it was for an ‘appropriate’ investigation,” and therefore, “the subpoena must have been issued for a proper purpose,” Joun writes. “This logic, if followed, would preclude any form of judicial review as the Government’s self-proclaimed say-so would always be sufficient [...] This is no logic at all.”

The Trump Administration has made its intentions clear through policy and propaganda alike—the anti-trans military ban, attempts to bar trans girls from women’s sports, the confiscation of many transgender people’s passports, and the cluster of executive orders dedicated to eradicating trans people from law and public life.

In fact, Joun found, federal officials failed to provide “any support” at all that the information sought pertained to allegations of fraud “as opposed to the Government’s stated goal of ending GAC.”

The filing further reads:

Joun also shot down thinly-veiled government assertions that the subpoena was an attempt to “evade state bans on gender dysphoria treatments.”

“Massachusetts does not ban GAC,” Joun writes. “It is thus difficult to understand what exactly the Government is trying to investigate BCH for.”

He concluded that the effort was motivated purely by bad faith political attacks. “[T]he true purpose of issuing the subpoena is to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect GAC within its borders, to harass and intimidate BCH to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.”

In July, The Washington Post unearthed another DOJ subpoena from this batch, which was made public via a case filing in Washington state. It reads similarly, demanding every conceivable record on employees and even volunteers within the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), plus sensitive patient information dating back to 2020.

“The subpoena to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was filed in court by the Washington state attorney general’s office, which in January successfully sued the Trump administration over two executive orders that sought to withhold federal money from institutions that offer gender care to minors,” The Post reported. “State Attorney General Nicholas W. Brown said in legal documents that he added the subpoena to the court record because President Donald Trump has ‘only escalated’ his attack on this type of medical care.”

CHOP, like BCH, is fighting the most dangerous parts of the subpoena. In a July court filing, they denounced the DOJ’s efforts as an attack not just on trans patients, but all patients:

Due to the shrouded nature of such investigations, the full list of subpoenaed providers—and whether they are complying—is not publicly known at this time.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/boston-childrens-fights-back-for at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Press Conference: No "Transgender" Or "LGBTQ" Symbols Found At Kirk's Shooting

ERIN REED | SEP 12, 2025, 12:37 PM EDT | SOURCE

Yesterday, several media outlets claimed or strongly implied that "transgender symbols" were found at the scene of the gun used by Charlie Kirk's shooter. This turned out to be false.

Governor Spencer Cox of Utah

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, several mainstream outlets rushed out sensational claims that “transgender symbols” were engraved on bullet casings found near the suspect’s discarded weapon. Within hours, senior law enforcement contradicted the reports and the outlets hedged—but the damage was already done, with the falsehood ricocheting across the internet. This morning, officials announced the arrest of a suspect in Kirk’s killing and revealed at a press conference that the actual engravings had nothing to do with transgender or LGBTQ people at all—they were internet memes unrelated to transgender people.

In the hours after the shooting, far-right propagandist Steven Crowder fanned the flames by posting a screenshot of what he claimed was an ATF dashboard, alleging that “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” was engraved on the recovered casings. The Wall Street Journal then laundered the same claim into legitimacy, citing anonymous sources who said “transgender symbols” were found. The effect was immediate: conservative influencers flooded social media blaming the killing on transgender people, and even sitting members of Congress joined in. Rep. Nancy Mace—who has built much of her political brand on anti-trans hostility—declared, “it sounds like the shooter was a tranny.”

By this morning, even the Wall Street Journal began hedging, cautioning that “some sources urge caution,” while other outlets started walking back their initial certainty. Hours later, the official story collapsed. At a press conference announcing the arrest of the suspect—a white 22-year-old man named Tyler Robinson—officials revealed the actual engravings found on the casings. None were “transgender” or “LGBTQ” symbols. Governor Spencer Cox read them aloud, as seen in the following clip:

The bullet that killed Charlie Kirk was engraved with the phrase “notices bulges owo what’s this”—a furry and anime meme that has circulated online for a decade, generally meant as a joke about something unexpected. Three other unfired casings were recovered: “hey fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓,” a reference to the Helldivers 2 video game code used to drop the 500kg bomb; “O bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,” the Italian anti-fascist folk song; and “If you read this you are gay lmao,” a trolling insult common in meme subcultures. In other words: internet detritus. Not a single engraving had anything to do with “transgender symbols,” let alone the trans community.

Even after the press conference revealed the engravings, far-right accounts kept the lie alive. Libs of TikTok claimed the casings bore “antifa, LGBTQ, and leftist messaging.” Joel Berry of the Babylon Bee told followers there was a “transgender” meme on them. Oli London insisted they referenced “LGBTQI+ furries.” The facts were clear, but the falsehood was more useful: the narrative seeded by the first wave of bad reporting continues to circulate, weaponized by right-wing influencers eager to turn any act of violence into another attack on queer and trans people.

Prominent transgender rights advocates are now demanding that the Wall Street Journal issue a full retraction and apology for its false reporting. “Transgender people are owed a retraction and apology from @wsj.com. The lie has already become canon to millions and it seems the least they could do,” wrote Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU on Bluesky. Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law, echoed the call: “The Wall Street Journal needs to issue a full retraction and apology to the trans community for this. Nothing less will suffice. They put us all in danger and recklessly put out incorrect information.”

This is hardly the first time a mass shooting has been pinned on transgender people—and it will not be the last. When Trump was shot last year, far-right outlets spread the photo of an unrelated transgender woman, who this outlet was the first to interview and exonerate. After Uvalde, another trans woman’s pictures went viral, amplified by right-wing influencers and sitting members of Congress. In Texas, a megachurch shooter was also falsely identified as transgender. The pattern is clear: at every moment of national violence, trans people are scapegoated, with the lie traveling further than the truth ever can. Charlie Kirk himself repeated this narrative even in his final moments, claiming there had been “too many” transgender shooters. Yet once again, the facts reveal the opposite. Even in his death, the rush to blame transgender people was built on nothing but misinformation.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/press-conference-no-transgender-or at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Anti-Trans Amendments Added To "Must-Pass" Military Bill In House

S. BAUM | SEP 11, 2025, 5:33 PM EDT | SOURCE

One congressman called them a blow in the &#8220;right-wing culture war to target the transgender community.&#8221;

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

Six anti-trans amendments were added to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday, Sept. 10, during a Congressional debate over the routine greenlighting of the defense budget. Seventeen Democrats voted to advance the bill despite this.

The provisions include two all-ages health insurance restrictions for trans service members and their families, who are already being forced out of the military; a rule barring cadets assigned male at birth from any “athletic program or activity” for women, functioning as a sort of military-grade anti-trans sports ban; a “trans bathroom ban” for all single-sex military facilities, including housing and locker rooms; the exclusion of gender identity from military surveys; and a functional ban on Pride flags at all Department of War (deadname: “Defense”) workplaces.

If signed into law, most trans-affirming care will be defunded for those on Tricare and the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP).

“I want to make sure we understand some broad themes—why these amendments are problematic,” said Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington.

“The transgender community has been targeted and discriminated against aggressively,” he said in a speech on the floor. “This is exactly what these amendments are about—a right-wing culture war.”

Four of amendments—including one of the anti-gender affirming care provisions, the sex segregation of athletics, the rule against trans-inclusive surveys and the anti-trans facilities policy—were introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, who spewed anti-trans slurs onto the House floor. The Trump acolyte is also running for South Carolina Governor.

Some of the worst offenders were Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, both of whom voted in favor of all six provisions. Rep. Adam Gray voted for all of them except the flag ban, and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas voted in favor of the restrictions on health care and military athletics.

Reps. Fields and Figures approved the proposed trans care funding ban for Tricare, but not the other amendments—including the similar care regulation on the EFMP.

Meanwhile, the athletics provision was also supported by Democratic Reps. Laura Gillen, John Mannion and Tom Suozzi of New York; Jared Golden of Maine; Susie Lee of Nevada; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Kim Schrier of Washington.

"The Democrats who voted for the anti-trans NDAA amendments are out of line if they think throwing military families under the bus will win them votes,” said Tyler Hack, Executive Director of The Christopher Street Project, a group dedicated to supporting trans-friendly Democrats in elections. “Now is not a time for leaders to capitulate to this disgraceful attempt to erase trans people from existence and erode the fundamental rights for anyone who doesn't fit MAGA's ideal.”

All the amendments passed via a voice vote, but Democratic representatives insisted on a roll-call vote, where despite the anti-trans amendments, at least 17 Democrats voted to advance the full NDAA bill with the provisions included.

The December iteration of the NDAA also included language targeting what Senator Tammy Baldwin called “servicemembers’ parental rights to access medically necessary health care for their transgender children.” She and 24 other Democrats pushed for an amendment to block the anti-trans language, but a vote on that provision was sidestepped by Senate leadership—which, at the time, was controlled by Democrats. As Erin in the Morning reported, they refused to let the amendment even come to a vote. Ultimately, 37 Democratic senators voted in favor of that NDAA with that anti-trans provision intact.

“The National Defense Authorization Act has traditionally received strong bipartisan support, yet for the second Congress in a row House Republicans have tainted a bill aimed at improving the lives of servicemembers with poison-pill riders that threaten our troops’ rights, their families’ stability, and our efforts to retain top talent,” said Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat and Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, as per Bluesky.

“Republicans’ sacrifice of a strong bipartisan vote for a politicized NDAA to appease the Trump Administration and a small slice of their base cannot undo the sacrifice of the transgender servicemembers, cadets, or military dependents that will be hurt by this bill.”

The debates were marked by a sense of chaos on the House Floor, which transpired as news permeated about the assasination of the ultra-conservative and anti-trans pundit Charlie Kirk.

GOP congressmembers tried to stop Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon from even holding a Pride flag while speaking out in support of LGBTQ servicemembers. Rep. Sara Jacobs of California countered anti-trans rhetoric by drawing attention to the many kinds of gender-affirming care commonly provided to cisgender people, such as Botox, but Rep. Mace began yelling and posted on social media that Jacobs, who is Jewish, needs a “nose job.”

The amendments must now clear a vote in the Senate, which is majority Republican, indicating its passage could be imminent unless Democrats filibuster.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-amendments-added-to-must at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

We Must Not Posthumously Sanitize Charlie Kirk's Hateful Life

ERIN REED | SEP 11, 2025, 1:59 PM EDT | SOURCE

Influential anti-LGBTQ+ activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday. While condemning violence is something most can get behind, sanitization of his hate has gone too far.

Charlie Kirk // Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, while giving a campus speech, far-right activist and anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a gunman—another grim marker of how political violence has become a recurring feature of American life. Quickly, political figures and pundits rushed to denounce the killing, as they should. But some went further, valorizing and lionizing a man who built his career on contempt of people he viewed as lesser. Political violence is corrosive and we must not excuse it—killing Charlie Kirk was horrific. But we also must not sanitize the memory of a man who wished harm on those he disagreed with, and who spread a message of hate to anyone willing to listen or pay him to so. We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

Yesterday, Gavin Newsom tweeted that we should “continue the work” of Charlie Kirk and honor his memory. This morning, centrist columnist Ezra Klein published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics The Right Way.” Both paint a portrait of an open-minded Kirk, a man of dialogue and principle. But this is not his legacy. To call for “continuing his work” or to praise how he “practiced politics” is to erase what that work actually was: a relentless campaign of hate directed at LGBTQ+ people, racial and ethnic minorities, and anyone who refused to fall in line.

I first reported on Charlie Kirk years ago, at the beginning of the modern anti-LGBTQ+ panic—back when Riley Gaines was rising to far-right fame and her fifth-place swim finish was weaponized against transgender people. In one interview with Gaines on Real America’s Voice, Kirk railed against “the decline of American men” and blamed it for transgender equality. Then he added that people should have “just took care of” transgender people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.” Let’s be clear about what that meant: the 1950s and 60s were not kind to transgender people. The “standard treatments” were lobotomy, shock therapy, and involuntary institutionalization. Police commissioners openly described queer people as “a cancer in the community” and promoted “vigilant detecting.” Violence was the norm. So when someone calls for “continuing his work” or praises him for “practicing politics the right way,” this is the work they are honoring.

Charlie Kirk’s violent rhetoric toward transgender people in that clip was not an aberration—it was his brand. He preached hate and violence as a matter of routine. In another interview, he mocked Christians who followed scripture about loving their neighbor, scoffing that God also “calls for the stoning of gay people,” which he described as “God’s perfect law.” This was not a slip of the tongue. Hate was and continued to be central to his message. So when people invoke Kirk’s “work” and urge us to carry it forward, when they valorize him as some open-minded political figure, this is what they are valorizing: praising violence, contempt for human dignity, and the politics of fear dressed up as principle.

Later in 2023, Kirk took the stage at a megachurch to unleash a tirade against transgender people. He called them an “abomination” and a “throbbing middle finger to God,” before turning his venom on swimmer Lia Thomas, citing scripture to brand her the same. It was the kind of hate-speech pulpitry we remember from the most virulent anti-LGBTQ+ preachers of the 1990s—rhetoric meant not to persuade but to dehumanize. This is Charlie Kirk’s legacy: a campaign to eradicate entire classes of people from public life. It is not dialogue, and it is certainly not something that deserves to be honored or continued.

Charlie Kirk’s hatred was hardly confined to transgender or queer people. In one interview, he said the first thing he thinks when he sees a Black pilot is, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” In another, he called for the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be bailed out of jail. He denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the very legislation that made possible the civic life so many now falsely lionize him for defending. He infamously said a few gun deaths were worth his second amendment rights in the aftermath of a school shooting. He even derided empathy itself as worthless, a sentiment that has since metastasized into a broader far-right project to strip empathy education from schools. This is not a man to be admired. This is his legacy.

Charlie Kirk was not “practicing politics the right way.” His work should never “be continued.” He embodied everything corrosive about American politics today. He turned the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ panic of the 2024 election into the centerpiece of his message, fueling many of the political ads that blanketed the country—ads rooted in narratives he and his network of far-right allies manufactured. He called for Nuremburg trials of gender-affirming care providers. He started a “professor watchlist” which called on his followers to report “leftist propaganda” in the classroom, which reportedly led to the families of those on the list being terrorized with death threats. His model of politics was not dialogue, but trolling: hopping from campus to campus to bait students, churn out sound bites, and spread hate. And his rhetoric was not debate—it was violent, dehumanizing, and designed to put targets on people’s backs.

You can stand against political violence, as anyone with a conscience does. You can call for a politics rooted in kindness—something we desperately lack today, and something I know the absence of intimately as a transgender person who has lived under the weight of rhetoric like Kirk’s. You can and should condemn killing over speech. But to ask that people carry on Kirk’s “work” is a bridge too far. We must not valorize his life. We must not sanitize his hate. Not now. Not ever.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/we-must-not-posthumously-sanitize at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Oklahoma Student Play About Shakespearean Theatre Shut Down Over Gender Laws

S. BAUM | SEP 11, 2025, 9:04 AM EDT | SOURCE

For students, the show must go on.

Photo by Rob Laughter on Unsplash

Oklahoma college administrators reportedly shut down a historically accurate student play about the boy actors performing as Shakespeare’s leading ladies over concerns about anti-trans laws—so students raised nearly $10,000 to bring the show to life.

Oklahoma Central University approved a student-led fall production of Boy My Greatness by Zoe Senese-Grossberg. “As the plague and rising religious conservatism threaten their way of life, they are all forced to reconsider their futures on the stage,” the show’s blurb read ahead of its world debut. “[It’s a] play about growing up, gender, and a chapter of theater history we seek to forget.”

Evidently, the school deemed this a liability. In order to avoid even the potential threat of a lawsuit, they revoked funding and permissions for the production, which had been pitched by two 20-year-old juniors at UCO’s theatre program, Liberty Welch and Maggie Lawson. They told Erin in the Morning they received school approval for the show this past spring.

“After spending lots of months working on this piece, and pouring our hearts and soul into it,” co-director Lawson said in a now-viral Tiktok, “we were informed that due to Senate Bill 796—which took effect on July 1st in Oklahoma—our university is at risk of being sued.”

SB 796 bans public universities in Oklahoma from utilizing “state funds, property, or resources” to “support diversity, equity, and inclusion positions, departments, activities, procedures, or programs.”

The duo said school officials gave students two choices: do another show approved by the university legal team, or self-produce the event, which would require them to raise thousands of dollars, find a venue, construct a set, and secure the rights to the script before the October premiere.

The university did not respond to Erin in the Morning’s request for comment. They did, however, tell the theatre news site Playbill that the decision was made after reviewing “federal and state laws” as well as Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination. It is unclear what, exactly, the legal issue was; UCO has routinely produced a number of plays that address gender and sexuality at their program, Lawson and Welch said.

To both of their surprise, however, the pair says they have been met with overwhelming community support—that even conservative Oklahomans usually hostile towards LGBTQ rights donated to their fundraiser, citing concerns about freedom of speech. They raised the necessary $10,000 in a matter of days through GoFundMe, secured a venue, and are now in rehearsals to prepare for opening night on October 23.

The co-directors remain optimistic about the show, but nervous about the political implications of the ordeal when it comes to the repression of student rights. “For it to come from a university that I pay to go to, it is a little jarring for me,” Welch told Erin in the Morning. They described an uncertainty about what was allowed in the classroom now, following the passing of anti-DEI laws and policies.

“Where is the line?” they said. “Our school has a major in women and gender studies. Are we just not allowed to do anything that pertains to that? There's no parameters.”

Playwright Senese-Grossberg, now a 25-year-old MFA student at the University of Iowa, echoed similar sentiments. “This is going to get attention, but if it keeps happening, it's going to stop getting attention,” she told Erin in the Morning, calling the attacks on First Amendment rights across the state and country—from the DEI bills to drag bans—as dangerously broad.

“You could use it to cancel any production that you disagree with,” she said. “Art is just going to keep getting censored.”

Boy My Goodness has not been the only casualty of SB 796, according to Mauree Turner, who spearheads communications operations at the LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma. Turner was also the first openly non-binary state legislator in U.S. history, a position they held from 2021 until 2024.

“We are seeing, in real time, SB 796 have a chilling effect on our education system,” they told Erin in the Morning. “It is unfortunate when people with the power to preserve access to education buckle under that pressure, and [we] always wish higher education leadership would side with the students over the Oklahoma legislature. But we are also proud of Liberty and Maggie for the community reminder: We take care of us.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/oklahoma-student-play-about-shakespearean at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

"Positive Depictions" Of Trans People Banned In Alabama State Libraries Proposal

ERIN REED | SEP 10, 2025, 12:02 PM EDT | SOURCE

The code change that has been proposed does not ban negative depictions of transgender people, however. Public comment is open until October 14.

Over the last four years, LGBTQ+ people—especially transgender people—have been attacked from every angle: bans on healthcare, restrictions on bathrooms, even attempts to restrict driver’s license gender markers. But one of the earliest and most revealing features of this backlash was the push to strip books about queer and trans lives from classrooms and libraries. At first, these bans cloaked themselves in neutrality, prohibiting vague “gender and sexuality” discussions—rules that always seemed to allow depictions of straight marriage while quietly targeting anything queer. Now, the mask is off. The Alabama Public Library Service has issued a proposal that would force libraries to pull any “positive depictions” of transgender people from general shelves and relegate them to the adult section.

The proposal is buried in a section on explicit content and obscenity. Alongside pornography and graphic material, a new provision tells libraries what they cannot make available to anyone under 18. It reads (emphasis added): “Under this section, any material that promotes, encourages, or positively depicts transgender procedures, gender ideology, or the concept of more than two biological genders shall be considered inappropriate for children and youth.” In other words: positive depictions of transgender people are forbidden, while negative depictions remain perfectly acceptable.

New APLS regulation proposal

The regulation, pushed by anti-LGBTQ+ groups like Clean Up Alabama, is a transparent attempt to dictate what young people are allowed to read. Earlier bans in the state at least tried to cloak themselves in neutrality: Alabama’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law, for instance, claimed to apply broadly to “sexual orientation or gender identity.” But in practice, depictions of straight couples were untouched while same-sex relationships were scrubbed from classrooms and libraries—an imbalance so blatant it’s led several courts to overturn such book bans. Now, that pretense has vanished. The new proposal explicitly singles out “positive depictions” of transgender people, codifying what was always the real goal.

Clean Up Alabama has already compiled a blacklist of books it wants banned under the proposal and other policies in the state, and nearly all of them are by LGBTQ+ authors or about LGBTQ+ topics. One is Calvin, a picture book about a transgender child—with no sexual content whatsoever. Another, Door by Door: How Sarah McBride Became America’s First Transgender Senator, is a simple political biography, which one challenger states “should be removed and destroyed.” Even Red: A Crayon’s Story—a book about a blue crayon mislabeled as red, meant to teach kids about resisting labels and being your own person—has made the list, despite containing no reference to gender identity at all. In other words, the campaign is less about “protecting children” from explicit content and more about purging any message of self-acceptance that doesn’t align with their ideology.

In an email to supporters, Clean Up Alabama explicitly tied the proposal to Trump’s executive orders, claiming that banning books with positive depictions of transgender people was necessary to comply with directives “affirming that there are only two sexes, male and female, as fixed realities.” The group went even further, urging the state to abandon reliance on the Miller Test—the Supreme Court’s long-standing standard for defining obscenity—when it comes to public libraries. That shift would effectively allow political ideology, not constitutional law, to dictate what young people are permitted to read.

In recent months, there has been a sweeping campaign to erase transgender people from public life. Federal policies have barred transgender people from obtaining passports with accurate gender markers, threatened to strip funding from institutions that acknowledge their existence, and pulled millions of dollars from research on transgender healthcare. School districts have even been told that free lunch money for poor children could vanish if they allow transgender students to use the bathroom. The censorship extends to history itself: Stonewall National Monument, which once commemorated “LGBT rights,” has been scrubbed of the “T,” recasting the event as a fight for “LGB rights” and erasing the transgender people who were leaders there. Censorship has become a central tool of the far right—and Alabama is now taking it to a whole new level.

The fight over Alabama’s library codes is not going unchallenged. Groups like the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition and Read Free Alabama are mobilizing against the proposed restrictions. They’ve laid out clear steps for residents who want to resist: submit written letters to the Alabama Public Library Service directly, request to speak at the September 18th or October 21 hearing in Montgomery, or use Read Free Alabama’s tool to automatically send a pre-written letter to the board.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/positive-depictions-of-trans-people at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Second Judge Rules Trump Trans Passport Ban Likely Unconstitutional "Under Any Standard Of Review"

ERIN REED | SEP 9, 2025, 12:21 PM EDT | SOURCE

The decision only applies to named plaintiffs while a separate passport decision in Orr v. Trump applies to all transgender people.

Maryland District Court // Wikimedia Commons // G. Edward Johnson

A federal judge in Maryland has ruled that the Trump administration is likely violating transgender people’s equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution by denying passports with accurate gender markers. The decision, though limited to six plaintiffs, echoes a separate class action case in another court that applies to all transgender people. In his opinion, the judge pointed directly to the discriminatory language of Trump’s own executive order as proof of unconstitutional intent. The ruling adds to a growing list of judicial decisions affirming that discrimination against transgender people cannot stand under constitutional scrutiny under any standard of review.

In his 34 page decision, Judge George Russell does not find Trump’s rationale for banning transgender people from obtaining passports with their gender marker compelling. He writes that Trump helpfully placed his discriminatory intent directly in the “purpose” section of the discriminatory executive order, which states that transgender people are “coercive” and that it is “wrong” for transgender people to use the bathroom.

Judge Russell writes (emphasis added):

“The Government asserts that the Policy “passes intermediate review because it ‘substantially further[s] an important governmental interest.’” (Opp’n at 23). To determine the purported interest at stake, the Court turns to the text of the Executive Order. There, the President explains “[i]t is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality[.]” (Executive Order 14168 at 8615). The Purpose of this directive is then described in Section 1 of the Executive Order, helpfully labeled “Purpose,” which provides that “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong.” (Id.). From the irrefutable text of the Executive Order, then, the purpose of the Passport Policy is summed up by its title: “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” (Id.).

Like every other court that has considered this Executive Order, the Court finds its stated purpose does not serve an important governmental interest that is exceedingly persuasive; further, the discriminatory means employed are not substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.

The judge also rejects the rationale that the government gave for the policy, which it claimed was necessary for “speed, efficiency, and identification.” The judge notes that this was a post-hoc justification for the policy, and that the government failed to support that such a policy would be necessary for the identification of a transgender person. He notes that the rationale for discriminating against transgender people would fail any standard of review, including rational-basis.

Judge Russell wrote (emphasis added):

The Court finds these rationales, at this stage of the litigation, fail to survive intermediate scrutiny. First, these post-hoc rationalizations are untethered from the Executive Order. See Virginia, 518 U.S. at 533 (“The [Government’s] justification must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation”). Second, even if the Court were to accept these post hoc rationalizations—that the denial of the existence of an entire group of people from government-issued identification documents was necessary to “ensure consistency across the Federal government”—the “Constitution recognizes higher values than speed and efficiency.” McNeill v. Butz, 480 F.2d 314, 323 (4th Cir. 1973) (quoting Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 656 (1972)). Further, “[s]ettled precedent instructs that a mere claim that a discriminatory policy is justified by an administrative convenience, like a desire for uniformity in data, cannot justify sex- and gender-based classifications.” Orr, 778 F. Supp. 3d at 413–14 (citation omitted). Far from surviving intermediate scrutiny, these rationales also fail to pass the most deferential standard of rational basis review. See id. at 418 (“[U]nder any standard of review, such targeting of a politically unpopular group runs afoul of our Nation’s constitutional commitment to equal protection.”). Accordingly, Plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their equal protection claim.

Government attorneys also tried to defend the passport policy by arguing that it applied to everyone equally—that neither cisgender nor transgender people could have a gender marker different from the one on their birth certificate. Judge Russell rejected this logic outright, likening it to arguments once used to justify racial segregation (emphasis added):

Second, the Government’s assertion that the Policy merely requires passports to reflect the sex designations on Plaintiffs’ original birth certificates takes a narrow view of the Equal Protection clause that the Fourth Circuit has rejected. In Grimm, when rejecting a school board’s argument that its bathroom policy discriminating against transgender students treats all students the same, the Court reasoned “that is like saying that racially segregated bathrooms treated everyone equally, because everyone was prohibited from using the bathroom of a different race.” 972 F.3d at 609.

That is what is happening here. A policy that requires passports to reflect the sex designations on an individual’s original birth certificate would apply to cisgender and transgender individuals equally but would only affect transgender individuals, because cisgender people typically would not apply for a gender on their passport that does not match their sex assigned at birth.

Lastly, Judge Russell dismissed the government’s attempt to use the Supreme Court’s recent Skrmetti decision—which upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth—as justification for the passport policy. He noted that the Court in Skrmetti explicitly declined to decide whether classifications based on transgender status warrant heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. By contrast, he emphasized that Grimm v. Gloucester County remains binding precedent in the Fourth Circuit, and under that precedent, policies that single out transgender people are unconstitutional.

The decision is limited to six plaintiffs, while a broader class action, Orr v. Trump, extends to all transgender people seeking passport updates. Still, its reasoning matters. It underscores that the administration’s policy is not just cruel but unconstitutional, and it hands transgender litigants another weapon to wield as challenges move forward. The government is almost certain to appeal, but with the Fourth Circuit’s history of favorable rulings on transgender rights, this case has the potential to ripple well beyond the individuals named in the lawsuit.

You can read the full ruling here:

Us Dis Mdd 1 25cv1344 D937650411e5707 Memorandum Opinion Signed By Chief Judge George Le

2.37MB ∙ PDF file

Download

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This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/second-judge-rules-trump-trans-passport at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

House HHS Appropriations Bill Would Devastate Trans Adult Healthcare Nationwide

ERIN REED | SEP 8, 2025, 7:15 PM EDT | SOURCE

The bill would bar federal funding for any "social, psychological, behavioral, or medical intervention" to treat gender dysphoria.

Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash

Today, Washington Bureau Chief Eric Michael Garcia at The Independent uncovered provisions in the newly released HHS appropriations bill that would bar federal funding for gender-affirming care nationwide. The measure, described by some as an anti-transgender “Hyde Amendment,” represents a dramatic expansion of a failed effort from earlier this year in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” his sweeping tax-and-spending package. This new language would prohibit federal dollars from being used for transgender healthcare at any age, extending even to “social, psychological, behavioral, or medical interventions.” Read broadly, the provision could shutter entire hospital programs that serve transgender patients and, at minimum, severely disrupt care for adults who rely on Medicaid, Medicare, and other federally funded services.

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for any social, psychological, behavioral, or medical intervention performed for the purposes of intentionally changing the body of an individual (including by disrupting the body’s development, inhibiting its natural functions, or modifying its appearance) to no longer correspond to the individual’s biological sex,” reads the provision.

The provisions would immediately strip Medicaid and Medicare coverage for gender-affirming care if passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law. But their impact could stretch far beyond that narrow reading. President Trump, who has repeatedly shown a willingness to expand executive authority, could wield the language as yet another weapon in his ongoing campaign of federal funding threats. Armed with this budgetary provision, his administration could pressure hospitals and clinics—just as it has already done with youth gender care providers—by threatening to pull federal dollars unless they comply with sweeping anti-trans policies.

Earlier this year, Trump wielded Medicaid and Medicare funds as a weapon to scare hospitals into halting youth gender-affirming care—without even having the backing of a statutory provision like the one now moving through Congress. His administration reportedly threatened to cut off all Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for any procedure at hospitals that continued providing such care to minors. Faced with the possibility of losing their largest source of federal funding, roughly half of youth gender clinics across the country shut down their programs, choosing to comply rather than fight in court. The result has been a devastating collapse in access to care for transgender youth nationwide.

Also earlier this year, Republicans attempted to push through a similar Medicaid and Medicare funding ban—this time targeting both youth and adults—by slipping it into Trump’s flagship “Big Beautiful Bill.” That effort was struck down by the Senate Parliamentarian, who ruled the provision out of order under reconciliation rules. But appropriations bills are not subject to the same guardrails.

Importantly, the funding ban would cover all forms of gender-affirming care, including “social” or “psychological” interventions. That language sweeps far beyond medical treatment and could place adult psychological support, therapy, and counseling directly in the crosshairs, along with any federally funded effort deemed “social” in nature. In practice, “social” care often refers to basic steps like updating names in official systems, changing gender markers, or affirming identity in institutional settings. Under this provision, the Trump administration could interpret even those routine measures as violations, weaponizing the ban to choke off critical funding for any entity deemed out of compliance.

These are not the only provisions in the appropriations bill targeting transgender people. Another section stipulates that any educational institution receiving federal funding could lose that funding if it allows transgender female students to participate in “athletic programs or activities designated for women or girls.” Such language would function as a de facto national transgender sports ban, forcing schools and universities into compliance. Even more troubling, the vague use of the word “activity” could give the administration sweeping latitude to strong-arm schools into broader restrictions—potentially extending to bathrooms, dorms, and virtually any gendered program or event, even if it may not be fully supported by some readings of the text.

It is important to note that the Senate version of the bill does not currently include this provision. These attacks on transgender healthcare and student rights will only make it into law if seven Senate Democrats break ranks and side with Republicans and the House provisions make it into the final bill rather than allowing the government to shut down. The outcome is far from inevitable—Democrats have the power to hold firm and demand that these poison-pill riders never reach final passage. The government funding deadline just three weeks away.

You can let your elected officials know how you feel by looking them up here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/house-hhs-appropriations-bill-would at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

DOJ Reportedly Uses Anti-Trans Slur In Call To Disarm Trans Americans

S. BAUM | SEP 8, 2025, 5:04 PM EDT | SOURCE

It doesn&#8217;t have to materialize to have its desired effect: to terrorize transgender Americans, whether they are gun owners or not, and to scare the masses into complying in advance.

Ted Eytan // Creative Commons

When Aria Trucios, a Wisconsinite and avid outdoorsperson, transitioned, they legally changed their sex marker to “X”—including on their concealed-carry permit for a firearm, which they and over 21 million other Americans hold.

It just made sense, they told Erin in the Morning. They’re out in the woods alone a lot, and they’re a survivor of anti-trans violence.

But now, Trucios says, they and other transgender gun owners have been thrust into a state of terror. On Sept. 4, a White House correspondent for The Daily Wire—a far-right news site—posted bombshell claims on X (formerly Twitter) from anonymous sources in the Department of Justice, purporting to show a glimpse into leaked talks by unnamed individuals. A Department of Justice official said they were considering “banning guns for transgenders” and used an anti-trans slur.

In the hours and days that followed, the story was confirmed by outlets like the Washington Post and CNN. All of the pieces relied on anonymous sources, allegations of comments made by nameless bureaucrats, and were couched with uncertainties. The talks were “described as preliminary in nature” by a source to CNN. There was no formal “proposal” a DOJ spokesperson said, and it’s “not on the docket” at the Oval Office as per a source at the White House.

But like many grandstandings of the Trump regime, it doesn’t have to materialize to have its desired effect: to terrorize transgender Americans, whether they are gun owners or not, and to scare the masses into complying in advance. Trucios said trans gun owners in their circles are considering fleeing the country or even detransitioning after hearing the news.

“Speculation around the gun policy has driven a lot of fear into a lot of people,” they said. Trans people are already disproportionately the victims of violent crime, especially trans women of color. Trucios said one friend “had a gun pulled on her just for walking out of a bathroom.” So if transness becomes a barrier to gun ownership in this country, Trucios asks: “How ‘trans’ do you have to be?”

Extremist ideas about disarming trans people, robbing them of due process and their Second Amendment rights, are not totally new. “In the wake of several prominent mass shootings, anti-trans narratives are used to promote common myths about gun violence that are designed to promote gun buying, block policy change and reinforce divisive far-right ideologies,” a 2024 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center found.

Conservative politicians and pundits have weaponized tragedies and conspiracy theories to help construct the idea of “transgender violence”—a buzzword akin to “gender ideology” in that it describes something manufactured by the far right to justify the persecution of gender and sexual minorities. It creates a false narrative painting transness as some sort of violent political dogma driving terrorism on a mass scale.

This fact has been obfuscated in light of the mass shooting at Annunciation Church in Minnesota, where reports indicate the shooter had, at least at one point, transitioned. The individual left behind a manifesto with no clear political motive, disparaging “President Donald Trump, Christians, Black people, Hispanic people, Jews and Israel,” as per the New York Times. “But the only clear finding so far, law enforcement officials said, was that the attacker had come to idolize mass shooters.”

“Donald Trump and his administration have moved so quickly to use that tragedy and that trauma to score right-wing political points,” said Brandon Wolf, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, in an interview with Erin in the Morning. "I wouldn’t be surprised if—in fact I’d bet that—this story was floated by the White House themselves to reporters, to try to satisfy the base's lust for transphobic fervor. But we haven't actually seen them put forward policy, language, or how they would enforce this completely unconstitutional idea."

Wolf, himself, is also a survivor of a mass shooting—the 2016 attack at Pulse Nightclub, a queer bar which has once again become a flashpoint in Florida politics after Governor Ron DeSantis waged war on rainbow crosswalks meant to honor the shooting victims. Multiple people have been arrested for allegedly recoloring the sidewalks.

While lacking specifics, the DOJ source’s anti-trans comments pathologized transness in ways that mimic the rhetoric arguably seen in the anti-trans Skrmetti decision. “Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” one source inside the Justice Department reportedly told The Daily Wire.

“The United States and individual state governments have openly considered gender nonconformance a mental defect since at least the late 1800s,” said Pelecanos, an LGBTQ civil rights lawyer, in an interview for this piece. "They associated gender diversity with mental insanity to justify permanent incarceration and eugenic sterilization.”

It would be false to say the government has always treated all trans people as mentally ill, Pelecanos noted, but this rhetoric revives some of the darkest stains in our nation’s history when it comes to anti-LGBTQ sentiments. "It appears the DOJ is attempting to reinstate these old eugenic beliefs against trans people despite a century of legal wins and culture shifts away from those ideas," Pelecanos said.

The Trump Administration has already proven itself to be at least partially untethered from things like checks and balances, the law, and the truth. On Bluesky, Alejandra Caraballo, a cyber law expert and trans rights activist, said such a ban “would not be exceptionally difficult to do” on a logistical level.

“But there's a lot that happens between now and then,” Wolf said, speaking more broadly about the implementation of the hypothetical ban. Moreover, enforcement of such a policy would require a level of efficiency and competence this Administration often lacks—for now.

The trans community, meanwhile, found an unsuspecting ally amidst the political turmoil: mainstream gun rights activists. The National Rifle Association (NRA) released a statement that condemned “proposals” that “arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights,” and then retweeted a post explicitly calling out the “Tran[s] Ban” on guns. An article from the conservative Cato Institute described the DOJ comments as “empty rhetoric and blatant hypocrisy,” arguing that such a policy would violate the Second Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court’s Bruen test, the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

However, as other civil rights are eroded for the trans community through state laws, federal policy, and Supreme Court decisions, wayward Americans like Trucios say the time to speak out is now. They aren’t unfamiliar with taking their safety into their own hands.

“I just worry that if it does come to pass,” Trucios told Erin in the Morning, “it's a little too late to do anything in opposition.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/doj-reportedly-uses-anti-trans-slur at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Creator Of The Trans Flag Is Fleeing The US Due To LGBTQ Persecution

S. BAUM | SEP 4, 2025, 5:57 PM EDT | SOURCE

In May, a Williams Institute poll found that nearly half of all trans adult respondents had considered moving out of state or out of the country.

Photo by ev on Unsplash

Monica Helms, the Navy veteran and creator of the original transgender pride flag, is fleeing the country due to anti-LGBTQ persecution.

She and her wife, Darlene Wagner, launched a GoFundMe earlier this year to facilitate their move abroad.

“We are worried there’s a possibility something could happen where we end up getting arrested just for being who we are,” Helms said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter when the fundraiser first kicked off.

The couple currently lives in Georgia, which Erin in the Morning’s newest risk assessment map labeled as a “high risk” area for transgender people. Helms is by no means the only transgender refugee fleeing the United States. In May, a Williams Institute poll found that nearly half of all trans adult respondents had considered moving out of state or out of the country.

Since 2023, almost three dozen anti-trans bills have been introduced in Georgia, four of which have passed, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. There was a ban on trans girls playing on scholastic women’s sports teams, a ban on using state funds to provide transition-related health care to incarcerated people, a ban on providing evidence-based medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria, and the Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act—which does not explicitly target trans people, but is likely to make it easier to discriminate against them using religion as a legal defense. (Thankfully, there have been some successful and ongoing legal challenges to many of these policies.)

However, “even blue states are starting to see problems,” Helms told the Bay Area Reporter. California’s governor reportedly moved to kill pro-LGBTQ bills behind the scenes; New Jersey school boards have engaged in a coordinated effort to forcibly out trans students to hostile parents; and hospitals located within Democratic strongholds across the country are violating state equal protections laws to deny trans kids access to health care, capitulating to Trumpian threats.

NBC’s Jo Yurcaba profiled families of trans kids moving to places like Australia and New Zealand. Hannah Kreager, a 22-year-old trans woman from Arizona, filed a groundbreaking asylum claim in Canada earlier this year; if granted, it would mark the first time a trans person from the United States would be given asylum in another country due to their LGBT status.

Of course, all of these stories come with the presumption of privilege. Trans people in these scenarios may have had familial support and/or a source of income or wealth that enabled them to uproot their lives to a safer place. Others resort to bouncing from state to state to receive care, uprooting their lives to live in a more tolerant community or traveling across state or international lines periodically to access health care.

As for Helms, she vowed to continue to fight for trans people no matter where she lives. “We will not abandon our activism,” she wrote in her GoFundMe.

Helms designed the transgender pride flag after having a conversation with the creator of the bisexual pride flag in 1999, she told the Bay Area Reporter. She has said it is important to her that it remains open and free to use for the public. The pink, white, and blue flag has become a household symbol for trans people and their loved ones.

“No matter how you fly it, it's always correct, which signifies finding correctness in our own lives,” Helms said.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/creator-of-the-trans-flag-is-fleeing at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Dem Congressman Ro Khanna Defends UK Anti-Trans Activist Arrested For Calling For Violence Against Trans People

ERIN REED | SEP 4, 2025, 12:22 PM EDT | SOURCE

Graham Linehan was arrested after calling for violence against transgender people using the bathroom.

Ro Khanna // Public Domain

On Tuesday, anti-transgender activist Graham Linehan was arrested after openly calling for violence against transgender people. In the hours following his arrest, far-right personalities rushed to his defense, framing it as an attack on free speech—though few of them were willing to share the violent message itself. By the end of the day, Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna joined the chorus, calling Linehan’s arrest “an offense to anyone who supports free speech” in a post on the twitter platform.

“The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets,” said Graham Linehan about his arrest. He then posted the tweet leading to his arrest, which called for the assault of transgender people using bathrooms:

This is far from the first time Linehan has used his platform to call for violence against transgender people. His social media history is littered with similar threats. In one post, he wrote, “If a man is trespassing in the women’s toilets, it is the duty of other men to turf him out.” In another, he targeted Eddie Izzard, a transgender woman, saying that if he ever saw her in a bathroom, he would “drag her out by her boots.” Other posts echo the same violent message, openly encouraging harassment and assault of transgender people.

While most of the defense of Linehan has come from far-right figures, much of the traditional press has also framed his arrest sympathetically. Headlines have largely focused on the “free speech laws” of the United Kingdom rather than the violent threats that prompted his arrest in the first place. Into that framing stepped Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who on Twitter called the arrest “an offense to anyone who supports free speech.” Khanna went further, comparing Linehan’s detention to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, a gay man persecuted for his homosexuality—a comparison that minimizes both Wilde’s suffering and the danger posed by Linehan’s rhetoric.

Neither Khanna nor much of the media coverage of Linehan’s arrest acknowledged the violent tweets themselves, nor his long history of legal trouble for targeting LGBTQ+ people. In 2025, for example, he was successfully sued for defamation after calling an LGBTQ+ rights campaigner a pedophile. He is also scheduled to appear in court for a separate harassment case involving an 18-year-old transgender activist.

According to the BBC, the activist, Ms. Brooks, a transgender campaigner, reported that Linehan approached her at the Battle of Ideas conference, called her a “groomer,” and asked, “how many kids” she had groomed. Later that day, Brooks said she confronted him outside the venue about why he had labeled her a “domestic terrorist.” During that exchange, Linehan allegedly grabbed her phone and threw it, damaging it. Linehan is set to go on trial today as a result of that exchange.

Linnehan showed up to his court hearing today wearing a sign stating, “There’s no such thing as a transgender child.”

Transgender journalists and public figures condemned Khanna’s defense of Glinner on Thursday. Internet, news, and culture writer Parker Molloy wrote on Bluesky, “This is absolutely disgusting to see from Ro Khanna. Zero percent chance he'd jump in to this to defend the "free speech" to make violent threats against any other group.” Journalist Katelyn Burns wrote, “|The| urgent news matter of the moment involving |Ro Khanna| is that he supports glinner's right to to tell everyone to punch trans women in the genitals.”

Ro Khanna stood by his tweet opposing Glinner’s arrest in a statement to EITM :

“While I condemn unequivocally the tweets themselves, I have always been a staunch First Amendment defender. I stand unapologetically for LGBTQ and trans rights and also for free speech,” said Rep. Khanna.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dem-congressman-ro-khanna-defends at Sep 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Erin in the Morning: 2025 Sep 17

All articles

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Trump's UCLA Settlement Proposal Reveals Massive Anti-Trans Attacks: Students And Faculty Fight Back

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House HHS Appropriations Bill Would Devastate Trans Adult Healthcare Nationwide

DOJ Reportedly Uses Anti-Trans Slur In Call To Disarm Trans Americans

Creator Of The Trans Flag Is Fleeing The US Due To LGBTQ Persecution

Dem Congressman Ro Khanna Defends UK Anti-Trans Activist Arrested For Calling For Violence Against Trans People