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- Trump Pressure Intensifying To Bypass Filibuster Over Anti-Trans, Voter Disenfranchisement Bill

- Florida Passes Bill That Lets DeSantis Remove Local Elected Officials From Office For "Promoting" Pride

- 4th Circuit Rules That States Can Compel Trans Adults To "Appreciate Their Sex" Via Care Bans

- New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work

- San José State University Sues Trump Admin Over Anti-Trans Threats—Refusing to Capitulate

- Federal Judge Rules Aetna's Blanket Denial Of Facial Surgery For Trans Women Is Sex Discrimination

- The Lavender Ledger: Your Strategic LGBTQ+ Weekend Reader By Erin In The Morning

- New Hampshire House Passes Trans Public Bathroom Ban That Bans "Asserting" Ones Identity

- Rogan Calls Trans People “Perverts,” Spreads School Shooting Lies On Show

- Missouri Advances Three Anti-Trans Bathroom Ban Bills In One Night

- Trans Girl Scouts Sell 330,000 Boxes Of Cookies In Public Outpouring Of Support

- Anti-Trans Democrats Blown Out In North Carolina Primary Election

- AG Letitia James Just Stood Up For Trans Youth In New York. Now, Will Mayor Mamdani Act?

- The Supreme Court Just Handed Down Its Fifth Anti-Trans Decision In Less Than a Year

- ASPS Members Demand Answers After Org Released Anti-Trans Statement From Behind Closed Doors

- Texas AG Paxton Declares Therapists Affirming Trans Youth To Be Illegal And Child Abuse

Trump Pressure Intensifying To Bypass Filibuster Over Anti-Trans, Voter Disenfranchisement Bill

ERIN REED | MAR 13, 2026, 11:15 AM EDT | SOURCE

Analysts say Republicans are "a few votes shy" from successfully bypassing the filibuster, but Senator Cornyn's flip combined with anti-transgender demands make this fight worth paying attention to.

Trump // DVIDS

At EITM, we often report the connections between voter disenfranchisement and the abandonment of procedural norms in relation to anti-trans laws. In state after state, politicians have used gut-and-go procedures to get anti-trans measures passed with little voter input, attaching them to unrelated bills in undemocratic processes. Now, those tactics are moving to Congress. Trump is demanding that his favored legislative vehicle, the SAVE America Act—a mass voter disenfranchisement bill that would end mail-in ballots and impose strict voter ID requirements—also contain a nationwide trans sports ban and a ban on gender-affirming surgery for transgender youth.

Those provisions are not currently in the bill text. But the pressure campaign to pass them is escalating fast. Trump’s Republican allies are pushing a “talking filibuster” maneuver that analysts at the Bipartisan Policy Center say would be tantamount to the nuclear option, allowing the measure to pass with just 51 votes, neutralizing Senate Democrat’s ability to block bills. And this week, Sen. John Cornyn—one of the Senate’s longest-standing defenders of the filibuster—reversed his position entirely, saying he now supports “whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary” to pass the bill. Though analysts still say that the votes are not there to do this, the gap appears to have narrowed, and it would not be the first time Republicans ditch historic precedent to pass anti-trans measures.

Trump first posted his anti-transgender demands to Truth Social on March 5, listing "NO MEN IN WOMEN'S SPORTS" and "NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN" alongside voter ID requirements. That last demand had originally included the caveat "WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE PARENTS," which led to a brief moment of confusion among far-right influencers as it indicated he might support gender-affirming care with parental consent.

The confusion quickly turned to Trump deleting the post and putting it back up without the parental consent language. He has since escalated the rhetoric repeatedly—telling House Republicans on Monday that he wanted to add "no men in women's sports and no transgender mutilation of our children," calling the additions "best of Trump." At a press conference yesterday, he repeated the demand: "We want no transgender mutilization [sic] of your children." The White House has formally confirmed the anti-trans additions as presidential priorities, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt stating, "We are not gonna tolerate the mutilation of young children in this country."

Post before deletion

Post after deletion

The demands are significant because anti-transgender measures have repeatedly failed to survive the legislative process in Congress. The filibuster previously kept a transgender sports ban from passing the Senate, and Democrats have used their leverage to block several other measures. In the "One Big Beautiful Bill" reconciliation fight, Republicans tried to include a ban on Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for all ages, but the provision was struck down by the Senate Parliamentarian under the Byrd Rule. And recently, Democrats successfully stripped every major anti-trans provision from appropriations bills during the recent shutdown fight. Attaching anti-trans provisions to the SAVE America Act is the newest attempt by Republicans to push these measures through, this time with serious pressure to drop the filibuster and attached to Trump’s most important policy priorities.

The pressure over the filibuster is notable. For years, the filibuster has kept a 60-vote threshold for most legislation, giving the minority party power to block bills when the majority holds all three branches. That filibuster has been whittled down—Democrats lowered the threshold for most judicial and executive nominations in 2013, and Republicans extended that to Supreme Court nominees in 2017—but it has been maintained for legislation.

The proposed mechanism to bypass the legislative filibuster currently centers on what is being dubbed the “talking filibuster.” Figures like Elon Musk and organizations like the Heritage Foundation are pushing this mechanism which would require Democrats to physically hold the floor nonstop to block the bill, before the bill could ultimately be passed, according to analysts, with a 51 vote threshold.

As of last week, Sen. Mike Lee, the bill's chief Senate sponsor, said he was "a few votes shy." Trump has publicly criticized Senate Majority Leader John Thune, saying “We have to stop it, John,” (referring to “election fraud”) and has vowed not to sign any legislation until the SAVE America Act reaches his desk. Thune maintains there are "not the votes" and has called the talking filibuster approach "much more complicated and risky than people are assuming." But on Wednesday, Cornyn’s reversal narrowed that gap, and the pressure on holdouts is mounting.

When asked about the increased pressure on Republicans to pass the bill, Democratic representative Sarah Mcbride from Delaware responded, "The administration has chosen to make the SAVE Act a buffet of the far right's worst hysteria, from election conspiracies to anti-trans policies. As has been the case thus far in this Congress, Democrats continue to oppose efforts to codify voter suppression and attacks on trans people. Even conservative commentators have questioned the inclusion of these unrelated provisions to this draconian election bill, and I believe its path toward passage is challenging to say the least."

The anti-transgender provisions are just part of the broader danger. The SAVE America Act would institute mass voter ID requirements nationwide, disproportionately impacting transgender people who often lack identification documents matching their name or gender. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, an estimated 43% of voting-eligible transgender people in states with primarily in-person voting lack correct ID—and as many as 210,800 could face barriers to voting. The bill could also impact an estimated 69 million married women whose birth certificates no longer match their legal names. Another provision would bar mail-in ballots except in narrow circumstances. Taken together, it would be a sweeping attempt to restrict Democratic voting power in a midterm year where Republicans are terrified about sweeping losses.

Readers concerned can contact their Senators, including their Republican Senators, and urge them against supporting weakening or eliminating the filibuster here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-pressure-intensifying-to-bypass at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Florida Passes Bill That Lets DeSantis Remove Local Elected Officials From Office For "Promoting" Pride

ERIN REED | MAR 12, 2026, 11:02 AM EDT | SOURCE

The bill could heavily impact LGBTQ+ activities throughout the state, and is the latest exercise in the erosion of democracy there.

Florida State Capitol // Michael Rivera // Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, the Florida legislature passed a bill that would ban all local governments from "promoting" or "adopting" activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion—and bar any recipients of city contracts or grants from doing the same. The bill explicitly includes gender identity and sexual orientation in its definition of DEI, meaning any official activity "with reference to" LGBTQ+ people could trigger a violation. That could include promoting or supporting local Pride events with any city resources or funding LGBTQ+ community health centers. The bill also contains a novel and extreme enforcement mechanism: any elected official the governor deems in violation would be guilty of "misfeasance in office," which under the Florida Constitution gives Governor DeSantis the power to immediately suspend that official by executive order—without a court hearing. It is a power he has already weaponized twice against elected Democratic state attorneys, and which would now expand to every city commissioner and county official in the state.

The new bill, SB 1134, is sweeping and deliberately vague. It states that any city or county office or official acting in their official capacity cannot "promote or adopt training, programming, or activities designed or implemented with reference to race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation." It also mandates that local governments not use funds for "contractors, employees, vendors, volunteers, or agents" who will "ascribe to, study, or be instructed" using materials with reference to the same identity categories, which could impact community health centers, hospitals, and nonprofit services in cities across the state.

Importantly, this bill contains an extreme enforcement mechanism. Under Florida's constitution, the governor can suspend elected officials from office for misfeasance—and this does not require a court hearing. The governor can simply issue an executive order, and the official is out. The suspended official's only recourse is an appeal to the Republican-controlled Florida Senate, which holds a 28-12 supermajority. SB 1134 would expand those powers to include declaring support for LGBTQ+ activities or programming in an elected official's official capacity to be an act of misfeasance worthy of removal from office, with DeSantis himself able to use these powers with a stroke of his pen. He has already weaponized this provision twice—suspending Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren in 2022, in part for pledging not to criminalize gender-affirming healthcare, and suspending Ninth Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell in 2023. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his authority to do so. This bill would hand him the same power over every city commissioner, county official, and municipal officer in the state.

The bill could have enormous consequences for Pride across the state. While it does not technically ban Pride events, the practical effect on Pride parades may be devastating. Florida's drag ban, which was recently put back into effect by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December, has already been interpreted to potentially bar parades that include drag performers—which is most Pride parades—from allowing minors to attend. When the drag ban first passed in 2023, Port St. Lucie canceled its Pridefest parade entirely, and Tampa Pride canceled all 2026 events citing the political climate, loss of corporate sponsorships, and the "discontinuation of DEI programs." Now, SB 1134, should it be signed by the governor, would extend the assault even further, barring any city from co-sponsoring, funding, or officially promoting Pride events.

Under broad interpretations of the bill's language, this could prohibit cities from displaying Pride flags on government property, sending official city delegations to march in parades, posting Pride events on city websites or social media, issuing proclamations recognizing Pride Month, or providing city resources like water trucks and staff time to support festivals. These are not hypotheticals—the City of Wilton Manors currently spends $50,000 in direct funding and an additional $48,000 in city services to co-sponsor Stonewall Pride, a large Pride event in the state. The bill arrives in the context of an escalating war on LGBTQ+ visibility in Florida: the state already forced cities across South Florida to remove Pride rainbow crosswalks last summer under a separate law, including the rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub memorial in Orlando where 49 people were murdered. City officials in Key West, Fort Lauderdale, and Delray Beach who fought to preserve their crosswalks would, under SB 1134, now risk being removed from elected office for doing so.

"This bill is dangerous, vague by design, and part of a broader political agenda of censorship and government overreach," said Stratton Pollitzer, executive director of Equality Florida, in a statement following the bill's passage. "Once again, Florida lawmakers have manufactured a sweeping anti-LGBTQ law—legislation intended to bully local governments and have a chilling effect on how they celebrate and support the diverse communities they serve. Florida's LGBTQ community knows all too well how to fight back against unjust laws. Just as we did following the passage of Florida's notorious 'Don't Say Gay or Trans' law, we will fight every step of the way to limit the impact of this legislation, including in the courts."

Florida is not the first place to attempt this. Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—whose anti-LGBTQ+ policies DeSantis's office has openly acknowledged as a model for Florida's Don't Say Gay law—Hungary banned Pride outright last year, even amending its constitution to block legal challenges. When Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony defied the ban by designating Pride as an official city event and leading 200,000 people through the streets, the government filed criminal charges against him. SB 1134 creates a strikingly similar mechanism on American soil: a local official who uses their office to support Pride commits misfeasance, and the governor can suspend them unilaterally. In Hungary, the mayor faces a fine. In Florida, DeSantis wouldn't even need to go to court.

The bill now heads to Governor DeSantis's desk. Given his record on LGBTQ+ issues—including signing Don't Say Gay, a drag ban, and the ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth—a veto is virtually inconceivable. If signed, the bill takes effect January 1, 2027, at which point any existing local ordinances, resolutions, programs, or policies deemed to relate to LGBTQ+ people and other “DEI” activities would be immediately void. The bill is likely to face court challenges, though the 11th Circuit Court and Florida’s Supreme Court have both been among the most hostile courts towards LGBTQ+ people.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/florida-passes-bill-that-lets-desantis at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

4th Circuit Rules That States Can Compel Trans Adults To "Appreciate Their Sex" Via Care Bans

ERIN REED | MAR 11, 2026, 12:31 PM EDT | SOURCE

They ruled that states "encouraging citizens to appreciate their sex" through care bans is a constitutional goal, affirming West Virginia's Medicaid ban for trans adults.

Jurist News

On Tuesday, an all-Republican and mostly Trump-appointed panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states can exclude gender-affirming surgery from Medicaid coverage, allowing West Virginia's exclusion to return to full effect. In doing so, the panel extended the Supreme Court's decision in Skrmetti—which held that transgender youth care bans were constitutional—to transgender adults, the first federal appeals court in the country to do so, and directly states that adult care bans are legal. Perhaps even more troubling, the judges declared that transgender adult care was "dangerous," and that it is rational for a state to restrict access to such care in order to "encourage citizens to appreciate their sex." The ruling effectively reversed a previous en banc decision by the same circuit and established precedent for a wave of new laws targeting transgender adults—just weeks after Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts declared on a podcast that the solution to transgender adult care was to "outlaw it."

“It is not irrational for a legislature to forgo Medicaid coverage of arguably ineffective and dangerous procedures and allocate its limited resources to covering other treatments. What’s more, States may legitimately recognize and “celebrat[e]” the “inherent differences between men and women.” Virginia, 518 U.S. at 533 (internal quotation marks omitted). And it is not irrational for a legislature to encourage citizens “to appreciate their sex” and not “become disdainful of their sex” by refusing to fund experimental procedures that may have the opposite effect. Skrmetti, 605 U.S. at 516–17,” wrote the justices, endorsing that “encouraging citizens to appreciate their sex” is now a proper and constitutional aim.

4th Circuit Opinion

The court also took a significant step toward ruling that laws targeting transgender adult care would be constitutional. In a footnote, the court states, "While Skrmetti involved sex-change treatments for minors, disagreement among experts about the efficacy and necessity of transgender surgeries extends to treatment of gender dysphoria in adults." This claim is contradicted by the medical literature—multiple studies have confirmed the positive impact of gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people, including a 40-year follow-up study that found high patient satisfaction, improved dysphoria, and reduced mental health comorbidities with no reported patient regret. Nevertheless, a broader issue is at play: the Fourth Circuit appears to be wholeheartedly endorsing the idea that restrictions on transgender adults' access to care are constitutional.

In issuing its ruling, the court cites Skrmetti over 70 times. Skrmetti held that gender-affirming care bans for minors were not discriminatory because they hinged on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and age, not on transgender status or sex. This reasoning was fiercely contested by the three dissenting justices and by multiple lower courts, which found that discriminating against a condition experienced exclusively by transgender people is inseparable from discriminating against transgender people themselves. But this ruling goes further than Skrmetti ever did. Skrmetti was explicitly about minors. The Fourth Circuit applies the same framework to adult care. The opinion even states outright: “If a State can reasonably ban it, of course a State can reasonably refuse to pay for it“—a sentence that reads less like a Medicaid ruling and more like a roadmap for legislatures to consider outright adult care bans.

4th Circuit Ruling

The court’s reasoning relies on a symmetry that collapses under scrutiny: gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria is banned equally for transgender and cisgender people, the court reasons, so no one is being singled out. But cisgender people do not seek gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria. The “equality” is entirely theoretical. Justice Sotomayor flagged this exact problem in her Skrmetti dissent, drawing a parallel to Loving v. Virginia—the landmark case striking down interracial marriage bans. Virginia had argued its anti-miscegenation law was not racially discriminatory because it banned interracial marriage equally for Black and white citizens alike. The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning in 1967, yet the Fourth Circuit now embraces its mirror image: a ban that targets a medical need unique to transgender people is not discriminatory because it technically applies to everyone. It is the equivalent of taxing yarmulkes and claiming the tax is not antisemitic because anyone, Jewish or not, who wears a yarmulke must pay.

What's worse, the precedent in this decision can be weaponized far beyond Medicaid. If it is not unconstitutional to "encourage citizens to appreciate their sex," the implications extend to virtually every area of transgender life. Are gender marker bans on IDs legal because carrying correct documents could "discourage" transgender people from "appreciating their sex?" Are drag bans and bans on cross-gender clothing legal because the state has an interest in encouraging the appreciation of sex? Could a state compel transgender people into conversion therapy, reasoning that it is not discriminatory because it targets a medical diagnosis rather than transgender status—and that the goal is simply to "encourage them to appreciate their sex?" The implications are terrifying for transgender people, and the court's language provides no limiting principle to prevent any of these outcomes.

The ruling also comes just weeks after Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts declared on the PBD podcast that adult care bans would be the organization's next target. "There does seem to be a mounting body of evidence that suggests a correlation between that surgery at any age, mental health issues, and increasingly, although we're running the numbers on this at Heritage, acts of violence," Roberts said. When host Patrick Bet-David asked how to address it, Roberts responded: "You outlaw it." When pressed on how, Roberts described a strategy of "radical incrementalism"—taking "a quarter of the enchilada" at a time until adult care is eliminated entirely. This court ruling hands Heritage exactly the legal framework it needs to execute that strategy.

The ruling is likely to be cited across the country as states push new anti-transgender legislation. It effectively overturns the Fourth Circuit's own 2024 en banc decision in Kadel v. Folwell, in which the full court ruled 8-6 that excluding gender-affirming care from coverage was unconstitutional. At least seven other states face active lawsuits over similar Medicaid exclusions, and the Ninth Circuit is currently reconsidering M.H. v. Hamso—a parallel Medicaid coverage case also sent back after Skrmetti. If the Ninth Circuit follows the Fourth, the appellate consensus solidifies. If it splits, it could tee up a Supreme Court case on adult care directly.Meanwhile, Puerto Rico banned adult trans healthcare to 21 years old, and Trump has set the age at 19 via executive orders, including some adults. The legal architecture for eliminating transgender adult healthcare is being assembled in plain sight, and this ruling will make it easier for states to do just that.

You can see the full 4th Circuit ruling here:

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This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/4th-circuit-rules-that-states-can at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work

ERIN REED | MAR 10, 2026, 12:20 PM EDT | SOURCE

The new review has led to a ban for HRT through the NHS England system under the age of 18.

PMLive // Healthcare NHS

On Monday, NHS England published 10 evidence reviews purporting to show that the quality of evidence for hormone therapy for transgender youth is low. The reviews were released alongside an announcement that the healthcare system would be banning new hormone prescriptions for transgender youth under the age of 18. But upon closer examination, the evidence reviews appear to be an extreme example of politically-manufactured science—similar to other reviews that have come out of the UK in recent months to provide political justification for banning gender-affirming care. Across the 10 reviews, 547 full-text screenings resulted in just 17 studies included—a staggering 97% exclusion rate. The reviews used exclusion criteria designed to guarantee that result, discarded some of the most significant transgender care studies published in the last decade for nonsensical reasons, and then reached what appears to be a predetermined conclusion: that there is insufficient evidence that hormone therapy for trans youth works.

In the last decade, there have been dozens of studies showing the positive impact of gender-affirming care for transgender youth—in particular, hormone therapy’s effects on reducing depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. On the flip side, there has been a strong push to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth and even adults among anti-trans activists in the United Kingdom. So researchers at NHS England apparently found a way to get around the evidence rather than contend with it. Instead of conducting one or two comprehensive reviews of the evidence for hormone therapy in trans adolescents, they split the question into 10 separate reviews—fragmenting by exact pharmacological combination (estrogen alone, testosterone alone, estrogen with GnRH analogues, testosterone with GnRH analogues, GnRH analogues alone) and then splitting each of those again by whether the patient identified as binary or non-binary. The result was 10 artificially narrow reviews, each searching for a hyper-specific patient population that most published research was never designed to capture. Studies that didn’t perfectly match a given review’s narrow criteria were excluded—even if they contained data directly relevant to the question of whether hormones help trans youth. As a result, 97% of full-text screenings were excluded from the results.

Exclusion rates

The Cochrane Handbook, widely considered the gold standard for systematic review methodology, explicitly warns against this approach: “Splitting comparisons carries its own risk of there being too few studies to yield a useful synthesis.” The Handbook advises review authors to use “broader questions” that “may be useful for identifying important leads” in cases where splitting comparisons yield too few useful studies. NHS England did the opposite. In research methodology, this kind of unjustified fragmentation is known as “salami slicing”—a practice that, according to a 2017 analysis in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, “encourages other forms of malpractice” and results in “scientific progress stalled and the literature polluted.” By splitting the evidence into 10 pieces, NHS England guaranteed that each piece would be too small to support a conclusion—and then cited the smallness as the reason to ban care.

In doing so, the researchers excluded some of the most impactful studies on transgender youth care published in the last decade. The largest NIH-funded prospective study of trans youth ever conducted—Chen et al 2023, published in the New England Journal of Medicine with 315 participants—was excluded from all ten reviews because it studied trans youth as a cohort rather than separating them by exact hormone regimen. Tordoff et al 2022, published in JAMA Network Open, which found 60% lower odds of depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality among trans youth receiving hormone therapy, was likewise excluded. Perhaps most damningly, the reviews systematically excluded the Dutch Protocol studies—the research that forms the foundation of the modern standard of care for transgender adolescents worldwide.

The Dutch Protocol involves prescribing GnRH analogues (puberty blockers) first to suppress puberty, then adding hormones later. When hormones are introduced, the GnRH analogues are sometimes continued alongside them—the blocker keeps suppressing the body’s natural hormones while the prescribed estrogen or testosterone does its work. This overlap period means patients are on both GnRH analogues and hormones at the same time. That is the “combination therapy” the reviews claim to examine. But the reviews inexplicably excluded every study where GnRH analogues were initiated for puberty suppression—even if the patient later ended up on exactly the combination of drugs the review was searching for. The monotherapy reviews excluded these studies because patients had received puberty blockers. The combination therapy reviews also excluded them, because the GnRH analogues were originally started for puberty suppression rather than started at the same time as hormones. NHS England’s own data, cited in the reviews themselves, confirms that 98% of its patients followed the very pathway every review was designed to exclude.

See the exclusion criteria for “Masculinizing medicines comprising testosterone with GNRH analogues”, which explicitly excludes any studies that reference GnRH analogues in the context of puberty suppression or used as puberty blockers:

Exclusion criteria for combination therapy, testosterone and GNRH

The reviews then use their manufactured scarcity to make sweeping claims about the "low quality" of evidence for hormone therapy. Even after excluding 97% of all screened studies, several of the surviving studies still showed statistically significant benefits—including reductions in anxiety and depression. To discount those findings, the reviewers turned to the GRADE system, a framework that rates the certainty of evidence on a scale from high to very low. Under GRADE, observational studies—which make up the vast majority of all pediatric research—automatically start at "low" and are routinely downgraded further. Every surviving study was rated "very low certainty."

But Gordon Guyatt, the McMaster University researcher who literally coined the term "evidence-based medicine" and helped develop the GRADE framework itself, has forcefully rejected this use of his work. In a 2025 interview with STAT News, Guyatt called using systematic reviews to justify banning gender-affirming care "egregious and unconscionable." As Guyatt has explained, a low GRADE rating is not a finding that a treatment doesn't work—it is a technical classification reflecting the type of study available, not the direction or strength of the results. Observational studies, which form the backbone of nearly all pediatric medicine, automatically receive low GRADE scores regardless of their findings. Importantly, over 90% of medicine lacks “high-quality evidence” as classified by the GRADE system, which explicitly does not bar medical care that relies heavily on individualized approaches. This is especially true among pediatric populations, where most evidence is “low quality” due to safeguards around experimentation on youth.

The studies were released alongside an announcement that NHS England would be pausing all new prescriptions for gender-affirming hormone therapy for people under the age of 18. This is a significant escalation in the United Kingdom, which had until now still allowed hormone therapy for 16- and 17-year-olds but had already instituted a ban on puberty-blocking medications in December 2024. Worse, buried in the equalities impact assessment accompanying the reviews, NHS England reveals that a similar process is already underway for adult care. The document states that NHS England is "separately reviewing the evidence for the use of MAF in adults with gender dysphoria, with the aim of a consultation on the evidence later in 2026." If that review follows the same methodology, it could be used to restrict or eliminate gender-affirming hormone therapy for trans adults in the UK as well.

NHS Equalities Impact

It seems likely that these reviews will be cited in other countries around the world to justify their own regressive policies—just as the Cass Review was before them. The Cass Review, which used similarly flawed methodology to justify banning puberty blockers in the United Kingdom, has since been cited by Republican lawmakers in the United States, referenced in briefs before the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti, and used to greenlight state-level bans on gender-affirming care across the country—despite being criticized by the Yale Integrity Project and major global medical organizations that have examined it. These 10 reviews are not science. They are the machinery of a government that has decided to eliminate transgender healthcare and is working backward from that conclusion. The United Kingdom continues to serve as the launchpad for anti-trans pseudoscience worldwide.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/new-nhs-england-review-excluded-97 at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

San José State University Sues Trump Admin Over Anti-Trans Threats—Refusing to Capitulate

S. BAUM | MAR 9, 2026, 6:53 PM EDT | SOURCE

The Trump regime said San Jos&#233; State had to break state law to discriminate against trans students, but the university said it isn&#8217;t budging.

San Jose State University // California.com

San José State University in California has filed a scathing lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s Department of Education, rejecting the regime’s attempts to use the crisis it manufactured over transgender athletes as a vessel for even more repressive and consequential anti-LGBTQ crackdowns.

San José State, a college about an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, became a flashpoint of the right’s obsession with trans youth after a student athlete was outed on the national stage. The Trump regime investigated SJSU for supposed civil rights violations, arguing that the athlete’s mere presence on the team infringed on the rights of the other women and Title IX.

The “resolution” proposed by the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) would have the university ban trans women from women’s sports teams, bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms, in violation of state law; strip trans women of their athletic medals and honors; issue apology letters to any presumed-cisgender woman who competed with a trans athlete; and adopt the GOP’s definition of “sex” in every aspect of campus life going ahead. If they don’t comply, they could lose federal funding.

Instead, San José State went on the offense. They’re suing.

Federal agencies have cajoled countless institutions of higher education into some form of capitulation since the beginning of Trump’s renewed term. UPenn, Brown, Northwestern and other elite colleges have made bargains sacrificing anything from trans athletes to life-saving care for trans youth to preserve their federal funding.

In SJSU’s lawsuit, filed late last week, the university emphasized it would follow all applicable laws, but that the law is not the basis of Trump’s investigation; transphobia is.

According to Iris, a San José State graduate student and president of the student-led campus group Trans Talk, the unapologetic lawsuit represents much-needed support for trans students—especially at a time when other universities are bending the knee to Trump’s anti-trans agenda.

“Appeasement doesn’t work,” Iris told Erin in the Morning. “They just come back for more. So standing up now is really important.”

(Iris requested her last name be omitted due to safety and privacy concerns.)

The lawsuit itself challenges Trump’s anti-trans threats on the grounds that it constitutes government overreach, that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, and that it is downright unconstitutional. It attempts to retroactively punish SJSU over Trumpian policies it did not break, in part because the supposed violations pre-date the President’s current term.

In fact, San José State was not just permitted to, but legally obligated to follow trans inclusive policies.

“[T]here is no question that SJSU’s conduct was required by Ninth Circuit law and the federal government’s own guidance at the time,” the complaint reads. California also retains some of the strongest equal rights laws in the country for transgender Americans. Therefore, Trump’s threat to hold critical funding hostage over trans athletes is “not because SJSU violated the law,” the complaint reads, “but because SJSU followed the law.”

Yet the goal posts keep moving, and the Department of Education is threatening to pull funding from any college or university that doesn’t adhere—at times, retroactively—to its contortion of Title IX. Its “proposal” seeks to force the school to redefine “sex,” and Title IX itself, based on unscientific, arbitrary, and politically-charged rhetoric:

An excerpt from the proposal by the Department of Education, which SJSU rejected.

This proposal would target trans people “in all practices, policies and procedures” at the university. This includes “intimate facilities, such as locker rooms, bathrooms, student housing, and overnight accommodations,” which would have to be divided “strictly on the basis of sex,” the proposal says.

Proposed settlement agreement rejected by SJSU

In response, the lawsuit takes a bold stance in challenging the very premises of Trump’s anti-trans crusade, pulling back the curtain on the right-wing smear campaign against trans people. In this case, for example, anti-trans activists pearl-clutched about the necessity of separating teams by “sex” on the basis of “safety,” positioning women as so much weaker than men that their mere co-presence on the court is a physical danger.

In reality, the men’s and women’s teams often play against each other for practice at SJSU and other colleges, the complaint says. Like many of these high-profile clashes over trans athletes, the issue was never gender parity or sex separation. It was always about pushing the needle further and further to the right and sequestering trans people from public life.

This lawsuit comes after over a year of legal back-and-forth, culminating in the OCR’s “Proposed Resolution Agreement,” which—among other provisions—requires SJSU to publicly agree that it violated Title IX, discriminate against trans athletes moving ahead, rebuke trans-inclusive language, and send out apology letters to presumed-cisgender athletes expressing “remorse” for welcoming trans student athletes.

It’s the same playbook federal officials used at the University of Pennsylvania against champion swimmer Lia Thomas, who is trans, and whose fifth-place tie at a swim meet led to the anti-trans activism career of Riley Gaines.

Among other infringements, SJSU argues this is a brazen violation of the Constitutional right to free speech.

“The First Amendment forbids such compelled speech, except when it survives strict scrutiny,” the lawsuit reads. Trump’s proposal demands that SJSU “express[es] certain sentiments, like remorse” with “particular individuals of the government’s choosing [...] in the way the government wants.”

In a statement to the press, the California State University system, which oversees SJSU, made clear its commitment to standing up for its students. “The federal government may not punish the CSU for conduct that complied with binding federal law and the government’s own guidance at the time,” it reads.

“Therefore, the CSU will not agree to accept the terms of the Proposed Resolution Agreement,” it continued. “The CSU remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and safe environment for all students, faculty, and staff—including members of our LGBTQ+ community.”

Editors Note: Erin Reed, who owns and runs Erin In The Morning but did not write this piece, recently took a paid speaking engagement at SJSU.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/san-jose-state-university-sues-trump at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Federal Judge Rules Aetna's Blanket Denial Of Facial Surgery For Trans Women Is Sex Discrimination

ERIN REED | MAR 9, 2026, 3:32 PM EDT | SOURCE

The landmark ruling could lead to broader FFS coverage in the future.

Montgomery County Planning Commission // Creative Commons

On Sunday, a federal judge ruled that Aetna's categorical denial of facial feminization surgery for transgender women constitutes sex discrimination under the Affordable Care Act. The landmark ruling, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, is believed to be the first federal court order requiring a major private insurer to make individualized coverage determinations for gender-affirming facial surgery rather than automatically rejecting every claim as "cosmetic." The case was brought by six transgender women who sought coverage for facial feminization surgery to treat severe gender dysphoria but were denied under Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletin 0615, which categorically excludes all gender-affirming facial procedures from coverage. Though the preliminary injunction applies to only two of the six plaintiffs, the class action is pending, and the court's legal reasoning will serve as a powerful precedent for transgender women denied facial surgery coverage nationwide.

“To be clear, the issue is not whether Aetna’s policy exclusion prohibits this type of gender-affirming care, but rather that Aetna’s policy exclusion prohibits only transgender individuals, the only individuals who can experience gender dysphoria, from receiving this type of gender-affirming care. Thus, when Aetna decided that facial gender-affirming procedures “performed as a component of a gender transition [were] not medically necessary and cosmetic,” Aetna prohibited only transgender individuals from seeking this medical care, and thus discriminated on the basis of sex,” wrote Judge Bolden in his ruling.

The ruling was made on behalf of two patients, Dr. Jamie Homnick and Dr. Gennifer Herley, both transgender women seeking gender-affirming facial surgery. Both reported severe depression, suicidality, and intensifying gender dysphoria related to facial masculinization—the result of not having access to puberty blockers or hormone therapy early in life. Both were denied categorically under CPB 0615, which does not evaluate requests for gender-affirming facial surgery on the basis of medical necessity but instead denies them altogether, regardless of a patient's individual medical circumstances or whether their treating physicians have deemed the procedures medically necessary.

The court leaned on the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County and Title IX, as incorporated into Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, to find that Aetna's exclusion constitutes sex discrimination. The court reasoned that to deny a facial surgery claim under CPB 0615, Aetna must first determine whether the patient is transgender—which necessarily requires considering their sex assigned at birth. If a person assigned male at birth seeks facial reconstruction to treat a congenital condition or traumatic injury, Aetna evaluates the claim for medical necessity. If that same person seeks the same procedures to treat gender dysphoria, Aetna denies it automatically. Change the reason for the surgery—which is inextricable from the patient's sex assigned at birth—and the coverage determination changes. That, the court held, is textbook sex discrimination. Notably, the court also addressed the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for minors under the Equal Protection Clause, finding that it did not disturb Bostock's application to insurance discrimination claims under the ACA.

Gender-affirming facial surgery can be a critical part of a transgender person's care. A UCLA study published in the Annals of Surgery found that transgender patients who received facial feminization surgery reported significantly better outcomes across several measures of psychosocial health, including reduced anxiety, depression, and social isolation. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health recognizes FFS as medically necessary for many transgender women. Some states, including Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, explicitly prohibit insurers from categorically excluding facial feminization surgery and require that claims be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for medical necessity. Most states, however, leave it up to individual insurers—and many, like Aetna, have maintained blanket exclusions. This ruling may change that calculus, giving transgender women denied coverage a legal framework to challenge categorical exclusions nationwide.

Though the ruling applies to only two patients for now, the plaintiffs are seeking class certification, which could broadly impact every transgender woman on an Aetna plan who has been denied coverage for facial surgery. Members of the same legal team—Advocates for Trans Equality, Wardenski PC, and Cohen Milstein—successfully challenged Aetna's categorical exclusion of breast augmentation for transgender women in 2021, resulting in a settlement that changed the insurer's general policy. If this case follows the same trajectory, it could force Aetna to add facial feminization surgery to its list of potentially covered gender-affirming procedures. More broadly, the court's holding that categorical exclusions of gender-affirming facial surgery constitute sex discrimination under the Affordable Care Act gives transgender women across the country a legal framework to challenge similar denials from other insurers.

You can see the full decision here:

Gordon Order Granting Pi Denying Mtd

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This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/federal-judge-rules-aetnas-blanket at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

The Lavender Ledger: Your Strategic LGBTQ+ Weekend Reader By Erin In The Morning

ERIN REED | MAR 8, 2026, 9:03 AM EDT | SOURCE

Our service for the week to cover the news we did not carry but do not want you to miss.

Inside EITM’s newsroom, we track dozens of breaking stories weekly—tips flood in from readers embedded in state houses, school boards, and organizations across the country. Our sources are everywhere. But here’s our dilemma: while we’re chasing down original leads and working our exclusive angles, critical news is moving through other channels that deserves your attention.

Consider this your weekend drop.

These are the stories that crossed our desk, passed our vetting, and matter to LGBTQ+ people—reported by trusted outlets while we were deep in our own investigations. Think of it as our intelligence-sharing agreement with you: the essential coverage from across the LGBTQ+ media landscape that we’ve been monitoring, verified, and deemed significant.

This week’s important releases:

She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. By Natalie Zuke - Assigned Media

Many people have heard about the sweeping attacks on transgender people in Kansas, where the state legislature moved to invalidate transgender people’s driver’s licenses and created a statewide bounty system empowering citizens to target transgender people in bathrooms they believe they do not belong in. The state sent letters to thousands of transgender residents invalidating their licenses overnight. What has received far less attention is that the letters did not only go to people who had previously changed their gender marker. Even some people who had simply changed their names saw their licenses invalidated. That became clear when one person received the letter despite never having changed her gender marker. Good reporting on this from Assigned Media.

Indiana’s Anti-Trans Attorney General is Preparing to Revoke Trans People’s Documents, By Aleksandra Vaca - Transitics

Speaking of driver’s license invalidations, carrying out such a policy requires something more than legislation—it requires a system capable of identifying transgender people in state records and tracking gender marker changes. Aleksandra Vaca called Departments of Motor Vehicles across the country and found that most states simply do not maintain databases capable of doing this. One state, however, does: Indiana. In new reporting, Vaca explains why that system could make Indiana the next state where mass driver’s license revocations like those in Kansas become possible.

Trans Porn Is Booming. Trans Rights Are Fading, By Playboy

In recent years, a trend has become increasingly clear in the data: while anti-trans politicians work aggressively to strip transgender people of their rights, consumption of transgender pornography is rising at the same time. Some research even suggests that this consumption is highest in the very states passing the harshest anti-trans laws. Activists argue this contradiction reveals something deeper—that many of those seeking to harm transgender people also view us primarily as objects of sexual fascination rather than as human beings deserving dignity and a place in civil society. Playboy has excellent reporting on this phenomenon in its latest piece.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-lavender-ledger-your-strategic-871 at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

New Hampshire House Passes Trans Public Bathroom Ban That Bans "Asserting" Ones Identity

ERIN REED | MAR 6, 2026, 5:05 PM EST | SOURCE

The bill is more extreme than a recent one vetoed by the governor.

Wikimedia Commons

Bathroom bans targeting transgender people have been spreading rapidly across the United States. In previous years, adult bathroom bans in public buildings were limited to a handful of states with extreme laws. This year, they have become one of the primary vehicles for anti-trans legislation nationwide. Kansas was the first to act, passing a bathroom bounty hunter system and invalidating transgender people's IDs. Idaho and Missouri began advancing their own bills. Now, the New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed its own version—one of the most extreme in the United States, which states that a trans person using the bathroom of their gender identity is a crime under the state civil rights act, violations of which carries hefty penalties. The bill passed 181-164 on Wednesday night, just weeks after Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed a separate bathroom ban. Republicans are now sending her something far more aggressive—raising the question of whether they are trying to move the goalposts or simply daring her to veto again.

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, with the exception of RSA 21:3, RSA 21:54, and paragraph II below, all multi-user facilities, including bathrooms, restrooms, and locker rooms located in buildings owned, leased, or operated by any municipality shall be used based on the individual's biological sex," reads the new bill. This prohibition is expansive: it applies to parks, rest stops, airports, civic buildings, and more, and could leave transgender people struggling to find a public place to use the restroom across the state.

The bill contains a novel enforcement mechanism not seen in any other state. It declares that a transgender person "asserting" that their gender identity allows them to use the bathroom is against the law under the state civil rights act, turning civil rights protections that were meant to be protective of transgender people into a weapon against them. "It shall be unlawful for any person to assert that their gender identity is a sex other than that defined in RSA 21:3 for the purposes of accessing places or services restricted on the basis of sex," reads the bill. Such violations could result in fines of up to $5,000 per incident and even jail time if a person violates a resulting court injunction by continuing to use the restroom.

The bill also contains provisions for private businesses. It permits any owner or operator of a "place of public accommodation"—a category that under New Hampshire law includes hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, bars, and concert venues—to restrict bathrooms by assigned sex at birth. The bill then immunizes those businesses from discrimination claims: "Adoption or enforcement of a policy pursuant to this section shall not be deemed discrimination under RSA 354-A or any other state law," it reads.

A separate bill, HB 1217, also passed on Wednesday. That bill permits governmental buildings and businesses to classify bathrooms and locker rooms by assigned sex at birth—similar to the bathroom bans Ayotte has already vetoed. It passed by an even wider margin, 187-163. It contains no enforcement mechanism, but rather, states that bathroom bans and sports bans are not discriminatory towards transgender people under New Hampshire law.

The bills are part of a larger movement towards bathroom bans for transgender people. Just last month, Kansas passed a bathroom ban that allows every citizen in the state to become a bounty hunter, where reporting transgender people in bathrooms can net them $1,000 per trans person caught. This law also invalidated trans people's drivers licenses in the state. Meanwhile, Idaho and Missouri are both advancing extreme anti-trans bathroom bans of their own, with Idaho's ban even applying to private businesses, making it against the law for a private business to allow a trans person to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The bills are substantially more extreme than the one vetoed by Governor Ayotte just weeks ago. In a veto statement of a bathroom ban last month, Ayotte stated, “I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities… At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

It remains unclear why Republicans are pushing an even more extreme version of a bill their own governor has already vetoed three times. The bill still needs to pass the New Hampshire Senate and be signed by Ayotte to become law. One possibility is that the more extreme HB 1442 is designed as cover for HB 1217—making that bill appear moderate by comparison and improving its chances of earning a signature. Another is that Republicans believe they can pressure Ayotte into signing, or are simply laying the groundwork for an override attempt down the line. Regardless, HB 1442 is one of the most extreme bathroom bans moving through any state legislature in the country, and transgender people across New England will be watching closely as it advances to the Senate.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/new-hampshire-house-passes-trans at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Rogan Calls Trans People “Perverts,” Spreads School Shooting Lies On Show

S. BAUM | MAR 6, 2026, 3:22 PM EST | SOURCE

This week, on The Joe Rogan Experience: Steve-O and more anti-trans hate.

Screenshot from The Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube, Ep #2463.

Like death and taxes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast is a painful and inescapable part of modern life. For transgender people, Rogan is downright malicious. This week was no different, as Rogan spouted anti-trans myths and vitriol during his sit-down with Jackass comedian Steve-O. The segment was posted March 4.

Steve-O was recounting the time he almost got breast implants as a publicity stunt. While grocery shopping, he encountered a transgender cashier, which seemed to inspire a rare moment of sincere reflection and empathy in the stuntman known for lewd and outlandish “comedy” acts.

“They described to me a level of oppression that genuinely f-cking broke my heart,” Steve-O said of his talk with a trans person. “They said, ‘Hey, let me tell you, like, I am not allowed to use the bathroom at my own place of work.’”

Rogan immediately cut him off, launching full-throttle into a rant, where he boosted the lie that trans women are largely “perverts” putting on an elaborate charade to gain access to women’s spaces, or that they are men who fetishize femininity:

“I genuinely think there’s people that feel like they are in the wrong biological sex, right?” Rogan said. Then he continued:

“But there’s also people that are fucking perverts, and they have a thing called autogynephilia, and what that is, is they get a turn on by pretending to be a woman, they get excited by it, and they want to be around women, and they’re creeps and so you give them a fucking Willy Wonka golden ticket to go into [...] the women’s locker room and the women’s bathroom and stare at women and pretend you’re a woman when you’re just a crazy man and you’re actually into women.”

“Okay, that’s real too, man,” Steve-O said, adding that trans issues are “complex” and “nuanced.”

There may be no transgender cashier this time around to correct Steve-O, but there is this transgender newsletter. So let’s be clear: There is no evidence that trans-inclusive bathrooms, changing rooms, or locker rooms lead to increased instances of sexual assault. There is a strong correlation between trans-exclusionary policies, sex-based segregation, and gendered violence that victimizes trans people and cisgender people alike. And the concept that transgender women are merely carrying out a subversive fetish is empirically false, hateful, and the kind of sentiment that leads to real-life violence.

This was proven true mere minutes later as Joe Rogan beat his chest about transgender people, namely trans women.

“Their entire life, they would get beaten up for that,” Rogan said. “And now all of a sudden, they have to be accepted.” The implication, it seems, is that Rogan thinks getting “beaten up” is an appropriate response to gender variance.

Paradoxically, he goes on to say that transgender boys and men should be allowed in the bathroom of their choice because, in his mind, they pose no such threat to others.

“It’s men that are the problem,” Rogan said. “No one gives a f-ck about trans men going into the men’s bathroom. Come on in. Who cares, right? Who cares? Oh, a girl’s going to sh-t next to you, or what is she going to do? Is she going to pee out of a funnel? What is she going to do? Like, no one’s going to get hurt.”

Rogan also bolsters the dangerous lie that trans people are disproportionately violent. The reality: trans people, especially trans women, are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, not the perpetrators.

“Do you know the majority of these high school shootings have been transgender people?” Rogan asks, which is unequivocally false.

“All right. You’ve convinced me,” Steve-O finally said. But later in the exchange, which took up at least ten minutes of the show, he also added: “My only takeaway, from my experience that I was relating to you, is that it made me feel compassionate.”

The fact remains that the vast majority of school shootings are cisgender men. Still, this kind of heinous rhetoric spurred rumblings of efforts to strip trans Americans’ Second Amendment rights, added ammo to conservatives who talk about forcibly institutionalizing trans people for being “violently ill,” and lends credence—at least in the popular imagination—to (so far unsuccessful) efforts to categorically label trans people “domestic terrorists.”

It’s far from the first time Rogan has used his massive influence to attack trans people, from promoting the litterboxes for kids conspiracy to pushing comparisons of transness to demon possession or being trapped in a cult. Yet in the same breath he says none of this precludes him from being “kind” to trans people, emphasizing that he had a friend, Jim Norton, whose wife is trans.

For those who are unfamiliar, Joe Rogan is not just any right-wing personality. His influence and rise have been meteoric. In 2025, “The Joe Rogan Experience” was the top podcast both in the U.S. and globally. In 2024, it was reported that his show had 14.5 million followers on Spotify, and he currently has an additional 20 million subscribers on YouTube. Together, that’s 34.5 million combined followers—which means he has more followers on those platforms alone than most countries have citizens. And that doesn’t even scrape the surface of the reach of his social media and viral clips that circulate online.

As of this writing, the Steve-O episode—a whopping 2.5 hours—has already surpassed half a million views on YouTube within 24 hours of being posted, which again, does not include all the viewers and listeners who engage with his content on podcast streaming services, or who see his clips circulate on social media.

With that kind of reach, one can see why some Democrats have eyed the show as a misguided attempt at “reaching across the aisle.” Some Democrats indeed have gone on the podcast, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator John Fetterman. Vice President Kamala Harris said after her 2024 campaign defeat that she “definitely regret[s] that we didn’t do it.”

But when doing so puts money in the pockets of a man whose business model is dripping with vitriol towards marginalized people, it can also be said that going on the show is tantamount to lending your voice, your time, and your views to a man whose hate-filled monologues can lead to violence.

Ultimately, Steve-O didn’t go through with his publicity “boob job”—part of the medical team backed out, and after the exchange with his cashier, so did Steve-O. It’s almost as if gender dysphoria is a serious issue; that anti-trans violence is a growing crisis stoked by right-wing propaganda; and that medically altering one’s body and sex traits is life-saving health care, not some laughing matter.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/rogan-calls-trans-people-perverts at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Missouri Advances Three Anti-Trans Bathroom Ban Bills In One Night

S. BAUM | MAR 5, 2026, 5:06 PM EST | SOURCE

&#8220;This is a make-or-break moment with what just happened in Kansas.&#8221;

Missouri Capitol // DVIDS

This week’s late-night bathroom bill marathon makes Missouri one of the nation’s leaders in the realm of anti-trans legislation this year. On Monday alone, three such bills were heard by the “Emerging Issues” committee in the state’s House of Representatives. The committee will vote on the bills this upcoming Monday. All of them targeted, at least in part, trans people in bathrooms.

“This is a make-or-break moment with what just happened in Kansas,” Rep. Wick Thomas, the state’s only openly trans representative, told Erin in the Morning.

Kansas, which sits on the western border of Missouri, recently and suddenly revoked many trans people’s driver’s licenses and state IDs. The measure was surreptitiously snuck into a trans bathroom ban bill at the eleventh hour, and Missouri could see Republicans try a similar tactic with as little as 24 hours’ notice.

“I could see them trying something similar here, if people don’t rise up right now,” they said.

This slate of Missouri bills is about more than just where trans people pee. While none of these bills explicitly criminalize trans individuals for using any particular restroom, they open up institutions to legal liability if they don’t discriminate against trans people and, more broadly, segregate various kinds of facilities by assigned sex at birth. And if anyone thinks they see a trans person in the “wrong” restroom, they may be able to sue

HB 2536, brought by Rep. Becky Laubinger, may be the most consequential. It would enshrine a binary, unscientific, and arbitrary definition of sex into law based on someone’s perceived capacity to produce certain sex gametes, functionally stripping intersex people and trans people from recognition by the state. And if a group of people doesn’t exist, then it becomes nearly impossible to argue that their rights have been violated in court.

Laubinger’s bill would require Missouri-owned facilities and institutions to adopt these definitions and exclude trans women from women’s spaces as well as trans men from men’s spaces. This includes bathrooms, locker rooms, or living quarters in government-run schools, buildings, parks, domestic violence shelters, airports, rest stops, sports stadiums, and so on.

Although the bill carves out exceptions for emergency responders or caretakers of disabled people, it opens up everyone, of any gender or sex, cisgender and transgender alike, to public scrutiny over what genitals they may or may not have.

Then, there’s HB 2075, sponsored by Rep. Brandon Phelps. If passed, this bill would trigger a statewide anti-trans bathroom ban in government-owned facilities. Some institutions have spent thousands if not millions of dollars on bathroom renovations over the last few years so that multi-occupancy restrooms could be more private for and accessible to all, including trans folks, families, and the disabled community.

Having to go back to the drawing board would be yet another drain on taxpayer dollars and government time and resources. “Failure to comply with the provisions of this section shall result in revocation or withholding of state funding for the entity that operates the public building,” the bill reads.

Finally, HB 1893, sponsored by Rep. Wendy Hausman, is an “emergency” bill, meaning it would be fast-tracked and go into effect immediately if it passed. That policy would give private schools the green light to segregate trans kids with impunity. It would also make municipal governments foot the bill for any legal fees should they try to intervene with local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Monday’s hours-long bathroom hearing, like the bills themselves, was fraught with an excruciating redundancy. It had all the hallmarks of a scene that’s played out thousands of times, over thousands of hours, in statehouses and courthouses across the country now.

Conservatives said the laws were necessary to keep women safe; opponents of the bill pointed out that such laws make everyone less safe and open up young girls to having their gender and genitals questioned by anyone with an interest in the matter.

Democrats asked about the impacts it would have on intersex people; bill sponsors betrayed that they didn’t really know what that is or how it works.

Locals showed up in droves to oppose anti-trans measures; polished D.C. lobbyists from the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom were flown in to voice their support.

Republicans argued that inclusive bathroom policies could facilitate acts of sexual violence; constituents pointed out that rape is already illegal, regardless of where it occurs. And as one mom of a trans girl pointed out, “Predators don’t obey signs.”

Meanwhile, trans people talked about the terrifying threats they face when unilaterally forced into the bathroom of their sex assigned at birth. One trans woman, a state employee, testified that she had been harassed and assaulted in the men’s room. Another speaker, a bald and bearded transgender man, said: “I’m scared of what will happen to me when someone sees me follow their little girl into the restroom—following the law, I’m supposed to go in that room.”

Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a Democrat who formerly worked with the statewide LGBT advocacy group PROMO, was especially unrelenting in her confrontation of right-wing lobbyists, who came with neat soundbite-sized talking points about the safety of women and girls.

“The Project 2025 plan is the elimination of trans people,” she said during the hearing. “While you’re over here telling me that you’re trying to protect women and girls, I’ll tell you what: I stand on the shoulders of those foremothers who carved out spaces so that we could be seen and feel safe. That is why I will, over and over again, unapologetically stand up for trans women, because all of this is coming from the same oppressors,” Fuchs said. “It’s all coming from the same folks who want to control women and control women’s bodies.”

At another point during the hearing, Rep. Thomas asked what would happen if and when law enforcement was called on someone presumed to be in the “wrong” bathroom. How would someone prove their “sex,” as defined by these bills, on the spot? How are law enforcement meant to respond?

“I’m sure [it] may happen,” Phelps said during questioning on his bill. “But it’s a hypothetical.”

In reality, this isn’t a hypothetical, but a terrifying daily reality for transgender people. In the past, even in states without bathroom bans, police have been called on transgender and cisgender people alike for using the “wrong” bathroom. This includes a report from a cisgender lesbian in Arizona last year, who felt she had to lift her shift to show male police officers her bra and breasts to prove her womanhood after they stormed the women’s room to confront her.

This risk is compounded for trans women and people of color. One expert witness, a transgender man, laid bare this threat in his testimony at the hearing. “If you call the police on me about a bathroom, you threaten my life as a Black man,” he said.

All of this is transpiring in Missouri during an election year. Lawmakers told Erin in the Morning it’s a distraction from the real issues at hand.

Rep. Emily Weber, who sits on the “Emerging Issues” committee, told Erin in the Morning that because she occupies a safe blue seat, she often spends time door-knocking for other candidates in more contentious districts.

“The conversations about the LGBTQIA community don’t come up at the doors,” she said. “This is not what people are discussing at the dinner table. They’re really concerned about how to make ends meet, how to pay doctors’ bills.”

Rep. Thomas, meanwhile, struck a defiant tone in their message to other trans Missourians as hundreds of hours and thousands—if not millions—of dollars are poured into these anti-trans attacks.

“I feel like people are always feeling like they’re on the defensive, but recognize that if you can—if the government is spending that much time on you, that is power,” Thomas said. “Flex that power.”

The committee vote on the bathroom bills will occur this Monday. If it passes—which it most likely will, given the Republican majority—it will move to the full House floor.

Constituents can call their state representatives, state senators, the Speaker and the Governor to express opposition to such measures. Missourians can also connect with on-the-ground LGBTQ advocacy groups like PROMO.

Meanwhile, this November, voters will weigh in on an amendment to the state constitution, which would ban gender-affirming care as well as abortions for minors.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/missouri-advances-three-anti-trans at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Trans Girl Scouts Sell 330,000 Boxes Of Cookies In Public Outpouring Of Support

ERIN REED | MAR 5, 2026, 10:23 AM EST | SOURCE

The total boxes sold is the highest in the history of EITM's trans girl scout cookie list.

Stock Adobe

Five years ago, as anti-trans legislation first began spreading across the United States, I kept thinking about the kids caught in the middle of it—transgender children suddenly facing a wave of hostility simply for existing. That year, I started something small in response: a trans Girl Scout cookie list. Only three scouts were on it. The internet responded immediately, helping them sell out their entire quota. Every year since, I’ve made the list again, and every year it has grown larger. Now, in 2026, the list has reached a staggering scale: 220 transgender Girl Scouts participating—and together they have already sold more than 330,000 boxes of cookies, with the number still climbing every minute.

One scout hoping to fund a troop trip to Alaska—and assemble backpacks for foster children—has sold 2,500 boxes of cookies, bringing those plane tickets within reach. Another scout, a competitive soccer player, was raising money so her troop could attend scouting camp without worrying about the cost; she has now sold 4,500 boxes, ensuring that trip is covered. One troop made up of transgender Girl Scouts set their sights on learning horseback riding and attending summer camp together—and sold 22,000 boxes to make it happen. And Pim, who simply wanted to go to Niagara Falls and to take her troop camping, has sold more cookies than the website can even track: more than 100,000 boxes.

And while we can’t know exactly how many of those sales came directly from our yearly list, we do know that these trans Girl Scouts have taken the internet by storm. Posts about them have racked up millions of impressions on Facebook and gone repeatedly viral on Bluesky. In the process, countless people looking for their next box of cookies discovered a cause worth supporting—and a group of scouts they were excited to cheer on.

The news about their staggering success comes during a broader regression around scouting organizations with respect to transgender people. In December, the United Kingdom's Girlguiding—the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts—banned transgender girls from joining, reversing a policy that had been in place since 2018. In the United States, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced Scouting America to agree to classify members by sex assigned at birth, eliminate diversity initiatives, and effectively out and segregate transgender scouts from their peers. Girl Scouts of the USA, however, has yet to see the same regression—the organization still stands by its transgender inclusion policy.

For these kids, that transgender inclusion policy has given them hope. At a time when thousands of anti-LGBTQ+ bills are being proposed and passed across the country, the cookie list is proof that people out there care. When every force in the world is acting against them, for once, their identity is not treated as a curse by society, but a blessing. Parents have told me that their children have been overwhelmed with joy watching the numbers climb, realizing that strangers across the country support them. And that’s worth protecting.

You can purchase Girl Scout cookies from a trans Girl Scout here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-girl-scouts-sell-330000-boxes at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Anti-Trans Democrats Blown Out In North Carolina Primary Election

ERIN REED | MAR 4, 2026, 11:06 AM EST | SOURCE

Anti-trans Democrat Nasif Majeed lost to Veleria Levy, who ran on a pro-LGBTQ+ platform. Other conservative Democrats lost as well on primary day.

In recent months, some political pundits and organizations have called for the Democratic Party to moderate on transgender issues or cast transgender people aside for votes. Groups like the Searchlight Initiative and Democrats like Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi as well as Governor Gavin Newsom of California have all leaned into this idea. Last night, however, primary elections in North Carolina told a different story: if you abandon transgender people, your Democratic voters will abandon you. The state's most prominent anti-transgender Democrat, Nasif Majeed, fell to progressive challenger Veleria Levy, who ran on a pro-LGBTQ+ platform, by more than 40 points. Other anti-trans and right-leaning Democrats lost their own primaries as well.

In July 2025, Majeed became one of the most consequential anti-transgender Democrats in the country. He provided the sole Democratic vote necessary for Republicans to override Governor Josh Stein's veto of HB 805, a sweeping anti-trans omnibus bill that banned legal transition through a discriminatory definition of sex, required transgender people's birth certificates to include their assigned sex at birth, extended the statute of limitations for suing gender-affirming care providers, banned gender-affirming care for incarcerated people, and censored school library books. Asked to explain his vote, Majeed offered only: "There were some moral issues in there that I had some sentiments, some deep sentiments about it." Afterwards, the North Carolina Democratic Party revoked his access to VoteBuilder, the party's voter contact software. Majeed had been so entrenched in his district that he ran unopposed in his 2024 primary. Now, he will no longer represent District 99.

Instead, the district will be represented by progressive Democratic challenger Veleria Levy, a community health policy advocate with more than 20 years of experience in healthcare and HIV advocacy. Levy had garnered a slew of progressive endorsements throughout the primary, including from FLIP NC, Carolina Forward, the Sunrise Movement, and the North Carolina Progressive Caucus. She ran on an explicitly pro-LGBTQ+ platform, writing on Facebook that "this campaign has always been about showing up for working families, Seniors, LGBTQ+ neighbors, immigrant communities, veterans and students to ensure our values are consistently represented in Raleigh." She won 69% to 27%. No Republican filed for the seat. Levy will take office unopposed.

Veleria Levy facebook

While Levy's victory was the most notable of the night, other anti-transgender and right-leaning Democrats faced similar fates. Former Representative Michael Wray, who voted with Republicans to override vetoes on both a transgender sports ban and a youth gender-affirming care ban in 2023, attempted to reclaim his seat after losing his 2024 primary by just 34 votes to Rodney Pierce. Wray even appealed to Republicans in his district to temporarily switch their voter registration so they could vote for him in the Democratic primary. It didn't work. Pierce, who had campaigned explicitly against Wray's record of voting with Republicans, demolished him in the rematch, 64% to 36%. Conservative Democrat Carla Cunningham, who was the sole Democratic vote to override Governor Stein's veto of an ICE cooperation bill and declared on the House floor that "all cultures are not equal," lost her own primary to Reverend Rodney Sadler, 70% to 22%.

Anti-transgender Democrats have not fared well in recent years. In 2023, Texas Democrat Shawn Thierry voted to pass a gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth, giving a speech on the Texas House floor calling transgender girls "biological males" and arguing that conversion therapy was the true solution to gender dysphoria. The following year, she lost her primary runoff to Lauren Ashley Simmons, a Black queer union organizer, in a 65-35% blowout. A similar result came in Kansas, where Democrat Marvin Robinson was the sole Democratic vote to override Governor Laura Kelly's veto of a transgender sports ban—a vote his Democratic colleagues accused him of trading to Republicans in exchange for $250,000 in funding for a community gazebo. He lost his 2024 primary, receiving just 22% of the vote.

In recent years, many Democrats have tried to suggest that the party should drop transgender issues and cave to Republicans to curry votes. This is despite the American public siding with Democrats on transgender issues over Republicans at a +22 margin according to a recent Fox News survey. Democratic politicians like Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi blamed transgender issues for Harris’s loss, with Moulton expressing concern that his two daughters might be “run over on a playing field” by trans girl athletes. Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed multiple trans-protective bills while even agreeing with Shawn Ryan, a far-right podcaster, that 25 might be too young for someone to transition.

Now, however, there is hope that this strain of anti-transgender sentiment may face resistance moving forward. Anti-transgender Democrats who cast a deciding vote against their own party's values risk their political futures, that much is clear from recent elections. The message from Democratic voters is not subtle. Abandoning transgender people does not win you new supporters—but it may win you an uphill primary challenge you are likely to lose.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-democrats-blown-out-in at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

AG Letitia James Just Stood Up For Trans Youth In New York. Now, Will Mayor Mamdani Act?

ERIN REED | MAR 3, 2026, 4:38 PM EST | SOURCE

Attorney General Letitia James has demanded NYU Langone restart care for transgender youth. Will NYC Mayor Mamdani act as well?

AG’s Office

In the last month, two major hospitals in New York City—NYU Langone and Mount Sinai—have ended their gender-affirming care programs for patients under 19. The decisions are acts of cowardice and capitulation to the Trump administration, and they violate state civil rights law in the process, given that Trump's threats against the hospitals are not law. In the immediate aftermath, Democratic politicians across the state with real power to force the hospitals back into compliance failed to act. But that changed last night. Attorney General Letitia James ordered NYU Langone to resume care or face legal action. It is good to finally see action protecting transgender youth in the state. Now, it remains to be seen if Mayor Mamdani will follow suit and use the tools available to him to return care to the trans youth affected.

"NYU Langone's change in policy is self-imposed; there has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender healthcare," says the AG in a letter to NYU Langone. "In sum, no federal action has changed the law; medically necessary healthcare for transgender adolescents remains legal and covered by federal programs. Without a formal change in the law, meaning an action from which legal consequences will flow, such as a published final rule upheld by the courts, NYU Langone's legal obligations to its patients are unchanged," the letter continued, giving the hospital 10 days to comply or face legal consequences.

This is not the first time James has used legal threats against the hospital. In February 2025, after NYU Langone canceled appointments for trans youth patients following Trump's executive order, James threatened to sue, warning that refusing care to trans patients while continuing it for cisgender patients constituted discrimination under state law. Thousands protested outside NYU Langone's Tisch Hospital. NYU Langone quietly reinstated appointments, though some patients reported being blocked from advancing their care beyond its current stage. The hospital never issued a public statement acknowledging the reversal.

The latest showdown comes after the Trump administration proposed rules in December that would strip Medicare and Medicaid funding from any hospital that provides gender-affirming care to patients under 18. The threat has proven effective in scaring hospitals into compliance—more than 40 nationwide have now paused or ended some form of gender-affirming care for minors. But the proposed rules are not law. The public comment period closed on February 17, final rules are not expected until spring at the earliest, and the rules themselves likely violate federal statute. Section 1801 of the Social Security Act explicitly bars the federal government from using Medicare or Medicaid regulations to control the practice of medicine, stating: "Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided."

Now that AG James has acted, many wonder if Mayor Mamdani will follow suit. The mayor ran on a sweeping promise to protect transgender healthcare—pledging $65 million in public investment, direct provision of care through the city's public hospital system, and aggressive enforcement of city human rights law against hospitals that pre-comply with Trump's demands. Now faced with his first major crisis targeting transgender people, however, his office has been largely silent. The mayor posted a statement on social media on February 19 calling NYU Langone's decision "yet another example of a private institution capitulating to the federal government's assault on transgender rights" and pledging that "New York City will continue to be a refuge for the LGBTQIA+ community." But he has not used any of the concrete tools at his disposal to bring care back, many of which do not require substantial investment. He has stayed completely quiet on whether his office is even in the process of taking steps to provide care for trans youth affected by the closures, even though he has a substantial set of tools to do so—and even though his own campaign platform was built around using them.

Among the most powerful tools at his disposal: Mamdani can immediately direct NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest public hospital system in the country, to absorb transgender youth displaced by the NYU Langone and Mount Sinai closures. The system operates 11 hospitals and more than 70 community-based health centers across all five boroughs, employs more than 42,000 people, serves over a million New Yorkers annually, and runs on a budget of roughly $10 billion. It already has eight Pride Health Centers. The mayor controls the H+H board. And the system has proven it can move fast: in January, Mamdani himself stood alongside H+H leadership to announce two new youth clinics at Woodhull and Queens, funded with $4 million from MetroPlusHealth, the system's own managed care plan. The number of transgender youth who would need to be absorbed from NYU Langone and Mount Sinai is a rounding error in a system of this size. A directive from the mayor's office to ensure H+H facilities are actively accepting these patients and connecting displaced families with care would cost little—and it has not come.

Mamdani also has significant tools with respect to city human rights law enforcement. The NYC Commission on Human Rights, which falls under the mayor's administration, can levy civil penalties of up to $125,000 per violation of the city Human Rights Law and up to $250,000 for conduct found to be willful or malicious—and can order policy changes. The Commission filed its own complaints against both NYU Langone and Mount Sinai on February 27, 2025—over a year ago—for denying gender-affirming care to new youth patients, and both cases remain listed as "open" with no fines levied and no enforcement actions announced. Mamdani's office could coordinate with Attorney General James and district attorneys to jointly investigate hospitals that deny trans youth care and to hold public hearings. There is nothing stopping the mayor from directing his own enforcement agency to move with urgency on its year-old cases, from pursuing parallel action under city law to reinforce the AG's order, or from making the same legal threats James is making—under the city's own anti-discrimination statute, with its own penalties.

Erin in the Morning has submitted repeated requests for comment to the mayor's office over the last two weeks asking whether the administration is taking any steps at all to restore care for transgender New Yorkers. The mayor's office has not responded to repeated requests for comment on whether he will act to restore care. NYC Health + Hospitals has not responded to repeated questions about whether the system would absorb patients displaced by the NYU Langone and Mount Sinai closures. The NYC Commission on Human Rights has said only that it cannot comment on ongoing investigations in response to a request for comment. Transgender New Yorkers have heard very little from their mayor on a defining issue of his campaign—but at least now, one politician with real power is stepping up. Attorney General James has shown twice that legal pressure works on NYU Langone. It remains to be seen whether she will have to do it alone, or whether the mayor who promised to “use every single tool” will finally pick one up.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ag-letitia-james-just-stood-up-for at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

The Supreme Court Just Handed Down Its Fifth Anti-Trans Decision In Less Than a Year

ERIN REED | MAR 3, 2026, 1:04 PM EST | SOURCE

The decision could mandate forced outing of trans youth across America.

SCOTUS // Wikimedia Commons // Hydetim

On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shadow docket decision that reinstates a lower court judge's injunction in favor of parents who wish for the forcible outing of transgender children in California and who wish for their transgender children to be misgendered by their teachers. The decision is the latest in a series of anti-transgender decisions by the Supreme Court, with more potentially on the way soon. The full impact of this decision is not yet clear, though it is likely going to lead to the invalidation of California's prohibition on forced outing and could be used to challenge individual school policies nationwide—even potentially leading to the forced misgendering of transgender youth in safe states. Because of a provision in the lower court injunction that prohibits schools from using different names or pronouns with parents than are being used at school, all parent contact effectively becomes an outing event for transgender students across California.

“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours. These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” says the unsigned majority opinion, leaning heavily on a parental rights framework to rule in favor of the forced outing of transgender youth.

The use of the parental rights framework is something that the liberal minority of the court did not pull punches on. In a footnote to her dissent, Kagan writes, "Another contrast—this time, between this case and United States v. Skrmetti—is also striking. In Skrmetti, several parents challenged Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The suit raised claims grounded in both equal protection and substantive due process. As to the latter, the parents in Skrmetti, similarly to the parents here, asserted a right 'to make decisions concerning medical care for their minor children.' And in support of that right, the Skrmetti parents relied on the same precedents the Court does today. But the Court, when deciding to grant certiorari in Skrmetti, limited its review to the equal protection issue: It would not even hear the parents out on their substantive due process claim."

The ruling is a response to a lower court injunction issued in December by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in a case that has been working through the courts since 2023. While the case predates California's SAFETY Act—a 2024 law that prohibits school districts from adopting forced outing policies—the reasoning in both the district court ruling and the Supreme Court's decision effectively undermines the law's protections. The district court injunction prohibits schools from using a different name or set of pronouns with parents than they use with the student at school. In practice, this means a transgender student must consent to being deadnamed and misgendered in class if they want to maintain any privacy from their parents. This injunction is now back in effect.

From lower district court injunction

While the ruling technically applies only to California, the constitutional reasoning extends far beyond the state’s borders. The court’s due process holding—that parents have a right “not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health”—applies to all parents, not just those with religious objections. That means every school district in the country that maintains a confidentiality policy for transgender students is now operating under a constitutional cloud. Fifteen states have already enacted forced outing laws or policies; those laws now have strong constitutional backing from the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, states with protections for transgender students now face the prospect of legal challenges citing this ruling. Kagan noted in her dissent that nearly 40 cases raising similar challenges to school confidentiality policies are already in the courts. This ruling hands every one of them a roadmap.

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in this case is deeply disturbing. By stepping in on an emergency basis, the Court has effectively upended California’s student privacy protections without hearing full arguments and before the judicial process has run its course. While not surprising, this move reflects a dangerous willingness to short-circuit the established judicial process to dismantle protections for transgender youth,” says Equality California of the decision.

This ruling is the latest in a rapid series of anti-transgender decisions from the Supreme Court. In May 2025, the court allowed Trump’s ban on transgender military service members to take effect, even though it was filled with discriminatory language calling being transgender inherently “dishonorable.” Then, in United States v. Skrmetti, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth in a 6-3 decision. Then, in Mahmoud v. Taylor—the very case the Mirabelli majority in this decision cites as precedent—the court ruled that religious parents must be allowed to opt their children out of LGBTQ-inclusive books in public schools. And in November, the court allowed the Trump administration to object to trans American’s passports over their gender marker, reversing more than three decades of policy. Taken together, they represent a coordinated legal dismantling with little parallel in modern civil rights law.

The legal path forward is bleak. California will continue its appeal in the Ninth Circuit, but the Supreme Court has already shown its hand—the likelihood of a reversal surviving another trip to the court is slim. The Trump Department of Education has already launched investigations into states it accuses of concealing students’ gender identities from parents, and this ruling hands the administration powerful new backing. Add to that the pending decisions in B.P.J. v. West Virginia and Little v. Hecox, the transgender sports cases expected by June that will have direct equal protection implications—and the picture that emerges is a Supreme Court that is systematically dismantling legal protections for transgender youth, one emergency order at a time.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-supreme-court-just-handed-down at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

ASPS Members Demand Answers After Org Released Anti-Trans Statement From Behind Closed Doors

S. BAUM | MAR 2, 2026, 4:41 PM EST | SOURCE

The statement is a blunt tool that the Trump regime can use to strip trans youth of life-saving care.

ASPS Logo

When the board of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a “position statement” recommending that its members delay “gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery” until a patient is at least 19 years old, the anti-trans media circuit went wild.

As Erin in the Morning reported in our fact check of a recent New York Times opinion piece, some pundits want you to believe this statement, released earlier in the month, represents a sort of turning point. That the right’s “just asking questions,” free-speech charade has finally destroyed the institutional capture of those pesky transgender ideologues. The anti-trans brigades celebrated the ASPS position statement—which is not a clinical guideline, nor a universal rule—as the shattering of a supposed universal orthodoxy endorsing the “transing” of children.

However, out-of-context soundbites and headlines can be deceiving, especially when they come from Fox News or the White House. For starters, the document says up top that it “is not a clinical practice guideline.” It also asserts a broad “opposition to [the] criminalization of medical care” in favor of industry self-regulation. And the declarations about the appropriate age for gender-affirming surgery are recommendations, not rules.

Nonetheless, there is strong evidence to suggest the so-called “position statement” may in fact be a politically-motivated document—doused with anti-trans double standards promoted by the Trump regime, and released after meetings with nameless government officials, at least according to one account reported by the group’s Gender Surgery Task Force.

But its true origins remain opaque. They change depending on who you ask and when you ask it.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a press release the same day, where federal officials such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jim O’Neill, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Mike Stuart praised the statement as “bravely standing with Secretary Kennedy.”

This could indicate the Trump Administration may have played a role in its production. And yet another high-ranking member, Task Force co-chair Dr. Scot Glasberg, who is reported to have been involved in drafting the statement, is quoted by the AP/CNN Health as saying: “This was an iterative process that took time, with no outside pressure.”

In other words, after the position statement came out, the Task Force was reportedly told that it was years in the making, but also that the Trump Administration brought it to fruition over a period of weeks, and that while ASPS officials met with the Administration—circumventing the Task Force at large—no external influences steered the report.

Now, physicians and patients are demanding answers. Who wrote this document, which arguably brands anti-trans and unscientific talking points with the ASPS logo? Why was most of the Task Force dedicated to this very issue kept in the dark about ASPS meetings with government officials? And did the Trump Administration play a hand in its crafting?

A spokesperson for the ASPS told Erin in the Morning that the impetus for the initial letter can be chalked up to “a series of misunderstandings, which ASPS is in the process of clarifying for its members.” But after weeks of continued silence, no public-facing clarifications have been made about the nature of these “misunderstandings.”

A Feb. 3 letter from members of the Gender Surgery Task Force—a group of plastic surgeons and other industry experts who had been discussing best practices for adolescent care for the better part of the year—says they were told after the statement’s release that its origins date back to 2024, well before the initial meeting of the Task Force. This is a likely reference to an August 2024 release where ASPS clarified it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.”

ASPS’ February statement goes much farther—to the right. It legitimizes and bolsters Trumpian anti-trans propaganda, released after what an ASPS executive reportedly called “an urgent, time-limited process initiated by a federal agency seeking clarification of medical society positions on this topic,” produced over the last month or so.

In any case, the real experts appear to have been sidestepped completely. Instead, the statement heavily leans on the anti-science, anti-trans manifesto penned by the HHS last year, which Erin in the Morning and countless scholars discredited at the time.

The HHS report promotes lies about transgender people, such as that transness is a social contagion, that conversion therapy is a viable option over transition, and that gender dysphoria is actually just a symptom of neurodivergence and autism.

Psychiatrist and Task Force member Dr. Scott Leibowitz said on social media that the letter “addresses the Task Force’s concerns about the [process] by which the ASPS generated its all-or-nothing position statement that listed the arbitrary age of 19 (notably the same age listed in an Administration Jan 2025 Exec Order).”

ASPS Gender Surgery Task Force Letter

“It is worth noting that the signatories of this letter include Task Force members with diverging viewpoints on the subject at hand, yet who agree on the importance of protecting the integrity of a process,” he continued.

Meanwhile, Dr. Blair Peters, a board-certified plastic surgeon who specializes in gender-affirming care at Oregon Health and Science University, posted that “the broader membership was not involved in this statement in any way.”

“I do not believe it represents the views of the vast majority of plastic surgeons,” they said on Instagram. Peters, in addition to around 200 medical professionals, submitted a similar letter in support of greater transparency and accountability.

“A position statement of this magnitude should not come as a surprise to the membership or to leaders in this area of clinical care,” that subsequent letter said. Nonetheless, “this position statement was published, presented, and discussed in the media as though it represents the consensus of ASPS membership.”

The ASPS statement is primed to fuel even more legal and political animus going forward, having circumvented its own specialists and accountability processes meant to curtail political influence over science. But there are ways to safeguard the practice of medicine from getting caught in the crosshairs of politics—take, for example, the American Psychological Association, which updated its own policy statement on gender-affirming care in 2024, via a vote of over 160 representatives to represent its members. Not bureaucrats behind closed doors.

Good medicine depends on listening to the experts, and as per ASPS’ own Code of Ethics: “Members should practice a method of healing founded on a scientific basis, and should not voluntarily associate professionally with anyone who violates this principle.”

As is often the case, it appears anti-trans extremists are the exception to this rule.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/asps-members-demand-answers-after at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Texas AG Paxton Declares Therapists Affirming Trans Youth To Be Illegal And Child Abuse

ERIN REED | MAR 2, 2026, 1:39 PM EST | SOURCE

The declaration echoes his 2022 efforts to target parents of trans youth with child abuse, and may force conversion therapy on trans youth in the state.

Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon/KUT News

Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas announced on Monday a new interpretation of state law that would extend the state's ban on gender-affirming care for minors to mental health providers, declaring that any therapist who affirms a trans youth's gender identity is "facilitating" illegal treatment and committing child abuse. Under his interpretation, therapists, counselors, psychologists and social workers who provide gender-affirming mental health care would be barred from receiving any public funding, including Medicaid, and could face revocation of their licenses and criminal penalties. The opinion also invokes mandatory reporting requirements, meaning therapists could be legally obligated to report colleagues and potentially the parents of transgender children as well. The announcement came one day before the Texas Republican primary for U.S. Senate, in which Paxton is running against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, and carries echoes of his 2022 child abuse declaration that led to sweeping state investigations attempting to remove transgender children from their supportive families.

“Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a legal opinion declaring that the prohibitions under S.B. 14 making it illegal for health care providers to ‘transition’ kids does apply to ‘mental health care providers’ licensed by the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council,” says a press release issued by the attorney general’s office. The release describes therapists who affirm transgender youth as “activists providing mental ‘health care’ designed to confuse children about their gender,” and claims that the path to children being “transitioned” is actually “unethical indoctrination” and “child abuse.”

“Any radical facilitating the ‘transitioning’ of our kids is committing child abuse,” Paxton said. “The law is clear that these radical procedures are illegal and in no world should Texans’ tax dollars be used to permanently harm children. This opinion should send a clear warning there will be consequences for any medical professional, whether a doctor or a therapist, who is illegally ‘transitioning’ Texas kids.”

You can see the full press release here:

Under the new interpretation, any therapist in the state could find their license pulled, lose the ability to take Medicaid dollars, or even risk child abuse charges if they provide gender-affirming care, according to the seven-page legal opinion released alongside the press release. On page six, the opinion explicitly reaffirms Paxton's 2022 declaration that "any person that facilitates these procedures or treatments could be engaged in child abuse, whether that be parents, doctors, counselors, etc.," adding that even "the failure to stop a doctor or another parent from conducting these treatments or procedures on a minor child" could carry the same consequence. Notably, the entire memo treats mental healthcare that affirms transgender youth as included in this due to stretching the word “facilitates” to include all affirmation in mental healthcare settings. It further warns that therapists who are mandated reporters under Texas law face criminal penalties for failing to report suspected “child abuse” by their colleagues or even potentially parents.

The opinion also seems to argue that mental health care providers should practice conversion therapy on youth instead. It cites professional ethics rules requiring psychologists to "rely on scientifically and professionally derived knowledge when making professional judgments" and to act in their client's "best interest," while citing rules for marriage and family therapists requiring use of therapeutic services that assist with "stabilizing," "alleviating," or "overcoming" a child's underlying "mental, emotional, or behavioral" condition. The implication is clear: if affirming transgender youth is child abuse and disallowed under Texas law in this interpretation, then a therapist's professional duty is to help trans youth "overcome" being transgender.

Conversion therapy is widely rejected by medical organizations and extremely harmful for LGBTQ+ youth. More than two dozen medical and psychological professional associations representing over 1.3 million health care providers have endorsed a joint statement calling for an end to the practice. A peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that young people who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year. According to the Trevor Project's 2024 national survey of more than 18,000 LGBTQ+ young people, 13 percent reported being threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy, and those who experienced it had more than three times the rate of attempting suicide compared to those who did not.

As the Texas Tribune says, “Paxton’s opinions aren’t legally binding, although state agencies often use his conclusions to set policy.” In 2022, Paxton issued a legal opinion declaring that parents of trans youth were guilty of child abuse under Texas family law. Governor Greg Abbott then directed the state's Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who provided such care, extending mandatory reporting requirements to licensed professionals and members of the general public alike, with criminal penalties for failure to report. The directive was used to launch investigations into families of transgender youth across the state, terrorizing parents and threatening to have their children removed from their homes, before it was blocked by a state court.

The opinion is the latest escalation in a years-long campaign by Republicans to weaponize every arm of state power against transgender youth. If enforced, it could make Texas the most hostile state in the country for transgender young people. The practical effect will be to drive therapists away from seeing transgender youth altogether, or worse, to force the mass adoption of conversion therapy across the state. For transgender children in Texas, the message from their own government is now unmistakable: there is no one left who is safe to talk to.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-ag-paxton-declares-therapists at Mar 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Erin in the Morning: 2026 Mar 13

All articles

Trump Pressure Intensifying To Bypass Filibuster Over Anti-Trans, Voter Disenfranchisement Bill

Florida Passes Bill That Lets DeSantis Remove Local Elected Officials From Office For "Promoting" Pride

4th Circuit Rules That States Can Compel Trans Adults To "Appreciate Their Sex" Via Care Bans

New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work

San José State University Sues Trump Admin Over Anti-Trans Threats—Refusing to Capitulate

Federal Judge Rules Aetna's Blanket Denial Of Facial Surgery For Trans Women Is Sex Discrimination

The Lavender Ledger: Your Strategic LGBTQ+ Weekend Reader By Erin In The Morning

New Hampshire House Passes Trans Public Bathroom Ban That Bans "Asserting" Ones Identity

Rogan Calls Trans People “Perverts,” Spreads School Shooting Lies On Show

Missouri Advances Three Anti-Trans Bathroom Ban Bills In One Night

Trans Girl Scouts Sell 330,000 Boxes Of Cookies In Public Outpouring Of Support

Anti-Trans Democrats Blown Out In North Carolina Primary Election

AG Letitia James Just Stood Up For Trans Youth In New York. Now, Will Mayor Mamdani Act?

The Supreme Court Just Handed Down Its Fifth Anti-Trans Decision In Less Than a Year

ASPS Members Demand Answers After Org Released Anti-Trans Statement From Behind Closed Doors

Texas AG Paxton Declares Therapists Affirming Trans Youth To Be Illegal And Child Abuse