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- Them Pride Month Superlatives: Gillian Anderson Is “Mother of the Year”

- “Hot Dykes Melt ICE”: Photos From the 2026 NYC Dyke March

COMMUNITY | JUN 30, 2026, 2:13 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Them Superlatives: Gillian Anderson Is “Mother of the Year”

For our Pride series, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma star Hannah Einbinder honors her screen partner, Gillian Anderson.

Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Them Superlatives are awards for our favorite people made up by our favorite people.

To honor Gillian Anderson, the resplendent star of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, as our “Mother of the Year” we asked none other than her screen partner, Hannah Einbinder, to pen a tribute. Read Einbinder’s hilarious and heartfelt message below:

Gillian Anderson is mother in many senses. In multiple ways.

I mean, for starters, she literally does have children. In the literal sense, she is a mother, right? A mother to three specific individuals who are wonderful in their own right. I would say that those three are mother, and the chain goes on and on. I think mother is genetic and it’s also not limited to gender. We know that, obviously.

She is mother, of course, as we define it culturally. She is powerful. She is iconic. She is nurturing and caring for the masses by going out in public and showing herself. That is a caring act, for all of us as a community.

She is also mother in the sense that she does take care. I can think of a million instances when we were shooting Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma where she was an advocate and an emotional support for me.

And, you know, I think that mother is a state of mind — and she’s in that state of mind pretty much 24/7. It’s no question, to me or to anyone else, that Gillian Anderson is the Mother of the Year and perhaps the decade and, well, dare I say, the century. — Hannah Einbinder

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is in theaters August 7.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/hannah-einbinder-gillian-anderson-pride-month on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

ACTIVISM | JUN 28, 2026, 1:37 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

“Hot Dykes Melt ICE”: Pride Is Still a Protest at NYC Dyke March

The event, held without sponsors or permits, maintains its vital political edge 33 years later.

Mackenzie Calle

Thousands of queer people took to the streets this weekend for the 34th annual NYC Dyke March. The event, held without sponsors and without permits, is underscored by one guiding principle: Pride is and always has been a protest.

This year, true to the march’s roots of advocating for communities on the margin, the theme was “Hot Dykes Melt ICE.” Pride arrived amid growing abuses and deaths in immigration detention facilities, and mounting deportations at the hand of ICE. Homemade protest signs up and down 5th Avenue mourned ICE’s killing of Renée Nicole Good, demanded an end to President Trump’s crusade against immigrant communities, and reminded onlookers that immigrants’ rights and queer rights are intrinsically linked — the fight for our rights includes all.

Mackenzie Calle

One of the marchers, Nadege, carried a sign calling for the closure of Delaney Hall, one of the largest immigrant detention centers on the East Coast known for horrific human rights abuses. When asked why they were focused on immigrants’ rights at Pride, they brought up the story of Eve Adams, a lesbian immigrant and owner of the gay bar Eve’s Hangout in New York in the 1920s. Eve was deported, ultimately resulting in her being sent to Auschwitz where she was murdered during the Holocaust. Nadege remarked how what happened back in the ’20s and throughout U.S. history mirrors what’s happening at Delaney Hall and to immigrants being detained and deported across the nation.

“What’s happening now in these detention centers [...] it’s fucking scary, you know?” said marcher Traci White, carrying a sign with a photo of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old kidnapped and detained by ICE in January on his way home from school. She expressed how reminiscent this time is to some of the darkest chapters of American history, and the importance that the queer community fight for immigrants’ rights.

Mackenzie Calle

The Dyke March has been able to keep up its subversive ethos by remaining a completely grassroots organization, acting in many ways as a salve to the pinkwashing of Pride. As HeritagePride celebrations cozy up to corporate sponsorships, the Dyke March remains unbought by any corporation or politician. While “fuck ICE” signs are a common sight at all kinds of Pride celebrations, the sentiment doesn’t hit as hard when it’s carried in parades that are funded by the companies bankrolling mass detention of immigrant communities.

On why the march continues year after year without sponsors, members of the NYC Dyke March Organizing Committee told me via email that “by refusing to work with corporations, we are denying them the opportunity to wash themselves of the harm they cause our own communities and other marginalized groups here and abroad.”

In stark comparison to larger Pride parades, the fact that the Dyke March occurs without a permit leaves it susceptible to police crackdowns, to which LGBTQ+ advocates are no stranger. The safety of marchers are protected by volunteer marshalls who border the march and are trained to manage conflicts that may arise. This commitment to keeping the march by the community, for the community, has created a sort of forcefield from Bryant Park to the Washington Square fountain. “It’s just our community, no sponsorships, no permits,” said Kelly Schenk, expressing why she prefers the Dyke March to other Pride events. “It’s just supporting each other and being there for each other.”

Mackenzie Calle

As much as the Dyke March is a show of explicit resistance, it’s also a display of queer joy and community, a potent political force in and of itself. Dee, a mom from North Carolina, attended the march for the first time with her lesbian daughter, Carson. Dee was rejected from her family after coming out as a lesbian herself late in life, and has been estranged from most of her family for 10 years now. She shared how significant it felt to be at the march, surrounded by queer community. “When you’re cast out by your family, that’s your whole world for a while, and you don’t realize that there's so many people out there that support you.”

The Dyke March endures without needing sponsors to fill the streets, or permits to avoid disruption. People poured into the streets by the thousands to channel rage, express joy, and make it clear that the fight for queer liberation is inseparable from the fight for immigrants’ rights.

Mackenzie Calle

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Your Guide to Lesbian Bars, Pop-Ups, and Parties in Every State

From Alaska to Wyoming, we’ve got hot leads on where to meet sapphics in every corner of the country.

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/dyke-march-2026-photos-interviews on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

News

- Count Anderson Cooper Among the Journalists Who Don’t Wanna Work With Bari Weiss

- Man Charged With Murder of Trans Student Juniper Blessing Found Incompetent to Stand Trial

- States Can Ban Transgender Women and Girls From Sports, According to U.S. Supreme Court

- Daveigh Chase, Star of ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and ‘Spirited Away,’ Died From AIDS Complications

- Kansas Anti-Trans Law Forced Her License to Say Male. Then a Cop Questioned It and She Was Charged

- “It's Coming From the Top”: Trump's EEOC Abandons Trans Man's Workplace Discrimination Case

- Daughters of the American Revolution Live Up to Their Name by Rejecting Ban on Trans Women

- Anti-LGBTQ+ Florida Lawmaker Caught Claude-Handed Using AI to Draft Legislation

- Clavicular’s Audience Is Extremely Paranoid He May Have Kissed a Trans Woman on Stream

- Ringleader in Torture and Killing of Trans Man Sam Nordquist Pleads Guilty

- Pete Buttigieg Was Separated From His Children After False CPS Report Targeted His Family

- Nearly 40 Years Later, Minneapolis Repeals Bathhouse Ban

- Zohran Mamdani Launches $15 Million Trans Care Investment: “New York City Is Stepping Up”

- WNBA Legend Angel McCoughtry Tells UFC President That Pride Nights Would Help Fighters Come Out

- Judge Blocks Trump DOJ From Seizing Trans Youths’ Medical Records From NYC Hospitals

- Someone Help Josh Hawley Understand MLB’s Three-Page Rebuke to His Pride Tantrum

NEWS | JUN 30, 2026, 11:18 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Count Anderson Cooper Among the Journalists Who Don’t Wanna Work With Bari Weiss

The CNN star reportedly told colleagues he’s not interested in working under the CBS News editor-in-chief.

Sign up for The Agenda, Them’s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays.

Amid Paramount Skydance’s pending purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper reportedly isn’t happy at the prospect of being in a newsroom led by controversial CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

Cooper, who is CNN’s most well-known host, has apparently told colleagues that he doesn’t want to work for Weiss, per the New York Times. Cooper left 60 Minutes, which is under Weiss’s direction, in May after 20 years with the program. At the time of his departure, Cooper told the Associated Press that working for 60 Minutes had been “one of the great honors of my career.”

He continued, “I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crew in the business. For nearly 20 years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs and CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.”

Per the Associated Press, Cooper had no comment as to whether Weiss’s tenure at CBS, and at 60 Minutes, weighed on his decision to leave the prestigious television program. However, Status, a site led by former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy published a report claiming Cooper’s decision was driven by the network’s direction under Weiss.

Weiss’s tenure at CBS News began in October and quickly courted controversy. Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes story about abuses at an El Salvador detention center where Trump had been sending Venezuelan migrants just a day and a half before it was set to air. She had pushed 60 Minutes to receive on-air comment from Stephen Miller, the white nationalist who serves as president Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.

Sharyn Alfonsi, the 60 Minutes correspondent who reported the story, called the move an “not an editorial decision” but a “political” one in an email sent to colleagues, per NPR.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi continued in the email. “If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

Both Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were forced out of 60 Minutes in May. Days later, Scott Pelley, who worked there since 2004, was also let go after he accused Weiss of “murdering 60 Minutes” in a staff meeting. “She does not love this place,” Pelley said, per the New York Times. “She was brought in to kill it, and she's been doing exactly that.”

Weiss made a name for herself in the news world through various New York Times pieces slamming “cancel culture” and through the founding of the Free Press, an outlet that has published an array of “gender critical” voices, including J.K. Rowling. The Free Press has repeatedly published misinformation about transgender people, including one piece — later found to have many fabrications — that alleged the mother of a trans child had no say in her child being prescribed puberty blockers.

Though Cooper has not made public comments about Weiss, he did use his final moments on 60 Minutes to warn against the program’s changing identity.

“There’s very few things that have been around for as long as 60 Minutes has, and maintain the quality that it has,” Cooper said. “Things can always evolve and change, I think that’s awesome, and things should evolve and change, but I hope the core of what 60 Minutes is always remains.”

He continued, “The trust it has with viewers is critical to the success of 60 Minutes.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/anderson-cooper-bari-weiss-cnn on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 30, 2026, 10:42 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Man Charged With Murder of Trans Student Juniper Blessing Found Incompetent to Stand Trial

Christopher Michael Leahy has been ordered to undergo competency restoration treatment at a psychiatric hospital.

SPD

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This article describes the violent killing of a transgender woman.

Christopher Michael Leahy, the man charged with first-degree murder over the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old transgender University of Washington student Juniper Blessing, has been found incompetent to stand trial.

In a hearing on June 29, King County Superior Court Judge Joe Campagna ordered Leahy to spend up to 90 days at Western State Hospital, where he will undergo competency restoration treatment. Leahy had previously been sent to the psychiatric hospital for evaluation after his attorneys expressed doubt that he would be able to assist in his own trial.

“Based on our observations, we don't think he’s competent to move forward,” defense attorney Laura Shaver said during the June hearing.

While the murder trial will proceed, competency is used to determine whether a defendant can enter a plea. He is scheduled to return to court again on September 25, where a judge will re-evaluate his competency.

Leahy, 31, turned himself in to the Bellevue Police Department on May 13, three days after Blessing was found dead in the laundry room of her off-campus student apartment building, where prosecutors say Leahy stabbed her over 40 times. According to court documents reviewed by Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, Leahy “stalked another UW student across a multi-building apartment complex eventually following this second student into the same building and same room where he would viciously murder Juniper Blessing.

Blessing was a major in University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, with a beautiful voice and passion for singing. She knew multiple languages, loved Pokémon, had a five-octave vocal range, and was an avid member of the UW Chorale, an ensemble of the school’s advanced vocalists.

“Juniper was a beautiful human being with a heart full of love, tolerance, talent, determination and intellectual curiosity that was a light in our world and to the world at large,” her family said in a May statement.

Her death sent shockwaves through her local Seattle community and rattled trans people across the U.S., particularly as many LGBTQ+ people have relocated to Washington State in search of a safer, more accepting place to live amid the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people.

“Juniper was only 19 years old — a gifted singer, artist, scholar and a proud transgender young woman whose life reflected courage, brilliance and possibility,” Santa Fe District 2 Commissioner Lisa Cacari Stone said in a statement. “Her loss devastates not only her family and friends, but our entire community.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/juniper-blessing-christopher-leahy-uw-trial on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 30, 2026, 10:19 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

States Can Ban Transgender Women and Girls From Sports, According to U.S. Supreme Court

The decision hands Republican-led states a major victory in their campaign to restrict transgender students’ participation in school sports.

The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, June 30, 2026. The Supreme Court is expected to release opinions at 10am. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg/Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state bans on transgender girls and women competing in girls’ and women’s school sports, delivering a major victory to Republican-led states and a devastating defeat to trans students who had asked the justices to let them participate in public school life as themselves.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that Idaho and West Virginia’s laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX. The cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., centered on two transgender students: Lindsay Hecox, who sought to run track and cross country at Boise State University, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a West Virginia girl who wanted to compete on girls’ teams at school.

For years, conservative lawmakers have positioned transgender girls’ participation in sports as an emergency, even as the number of students affected remains small. But the legal campaign was never only about who gets to run a race or join a team. It was about whether transgender people can be carved out of public life by category.

The majority rejected arguments that the laws discriminate against transgender students, relying on the court’s recent decision in United States v. Skrmetti to say the bans classify students by sex, not by gender identity or transgender status. Writing for the majority, Kavanaugh said the court would not require states or schools to make athlete-by-athlete determinations about whether a transgender girl who has taken puberty blockers or hormones has retained any athletic advantage.

“Particularly in the sports context, determining the effects of the puberty blockers and hormones taken by transgender athletes — and then comparing each of those transgender athletes’ abilities to those of other individual biological males and individual biological females in the relevant sport — would be an almost impossible task for a judge to perform on an equitable basis,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Kavanaugh said Title IX allows schools to maintain separate girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on what the court called “biological sex,” and that states may use the same rule under the Constitution. “Schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex,” he wrote.

Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Thomas and Gorsuch each wrote concurring opinions.

"Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are," Thomas wrote.

In a blistering partial dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the court had cut off the students’ constitutional claims before lower courts could resolve key factual questions.

Sotomayor agreed that Pepper-Jackson’s Title IX claim failed, but said the majority went much further than it needed to. The central fight in her dissent was over Equal Protection. She wrote that West Virginia used a sex-based classification and therefore had to satisfy heightened scrutiny. Pepper-Jackson, she said, should have had the chance to prove that the state’s stated interests in safety and fairness did not apply to transgender girls like her who had not experienced endogenous male puberty and who receive gender-affirming treatment.

“Today the Court holds that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause protects B.P.J.’s ability to do so,” Sotomayor wrote.

She accused the majority of applying “a form of heightened scrutiny divorced from this Court’s cases” and said it had denied Pepper-Jackson the chance to test West Virginia’s claims in court.

“Yet in an opinion unencumbered by fact or law, the majority today cuts off that process prematurely, deciding instead that B.P.J.’s case must end now,” Sotomayor wrote.

The dissent framed the ruling as a constitutional retreat from treating people as individuals. Sotomayor wrote that “unjustified sex-based discrimination inflicts ‘injury ... to personal dignity’ regardless of the number of individuals affected.”

She closed by warning that the majority’s decision allows states to exclude transgender girls even where the facts may not support the state’s stated rationale.

“Because of the Court’s decision today, West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B.P.J. and others like her these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not,” Sotomayor wrote. “Sports, of course, are often zero sum, but the law need not and should not be.”

Jackson also wrote separately, warning that the majority went too far in declaring that Title IX’s reference to sex “cannot plausibly” mean anything beyond sex assigned at birth. “Title IX makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose,” Jackson wrote.

The Trevor Project, the LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, condemned the ruling, saying it would compound the harm transgender and nonbinary young people already feel from anti-LGBTQ+ laws and political debates. Jaymes Black, the organization’s CEO, said the decision “only serve[s] to send a message to transgender and nonbinary young people that says, ‘you don’t belong.’” Black added, “But these young people do belong.”

The group cited its 2025 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People, which found that 94 percent of transgender and nonbinary young people said recent LGBTQ+-related policies, laws and debates caused them stress or anxiety, while 86 percent said they made them feel unsafe. The organization also said transgender and nonbinary young people in states with anti-transgender laws reported up to a 72 percent increase in past-year suicide attempts compared with those in states without such laws.

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat and one of the most powerful out LGBTQ+ members of Congress, told The Advocate shortly after the ruling that the decision fit into a broader pattern from the court.

“I’ve always believed that young people should have a chance to participate and learn teamwork and play in sports, and that includes all young people,” Garcia said. “Unfortunately, it’s not a surprise with the Supreme Court that they continue to roll back rights not just for LGBTQ+ people but for all people.”

Garcia said the decision underscored the need for LGBTQ+ people and allies to keep pressing for civil rights beyond Pride Month.

“I think it continues to reaffirm why we have to move forward and protest and be proud of who we are and use not just Pride, but every day of the year to advance the civil rights for all LGBTQ+ people,” he said. “And that includes trans people.”

In the majority opinion, the Supreme Court noted that transgender people deserve respect.

"We emphasize one last point," Kavanaugh wrote. "Most of the biological female and transgender student-athletes who are involved in transgender sports disputes around the country are teenagers or in their early twenties. Those student-athletes want to play sports. Their desire to compete warrants respect. No student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified."

This story is developing.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/transgender-sports-scotus-decision-west-virginia on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 30, 2026, 9:43 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Daveigh Chase, Star of Lilo & Stitch and Spirited Away, Died From AIDS Complications

The actress died June 16 in Los Angeles at age 35.

Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office announced on Monday that actress Daveigh Chase — who starred in films such as Donnie Darko, The Ring and lent her voice to Spirited Away and Lilo & Stitch — died due to complications related to an AIDS diagnosis. Chase was 35 at the time of her death, which occurred on June 16.

While the coroner listed the primary cause of her death as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, the full name for the acronym AIDS, chronic polysubstance use — the use of several different drugs within a short period of time — was also listed as a “significant condition.”

Chase’s father, John David Schwallier, had previously told the New York Times that his daughter had died in the hospital due to bacterial meningitis and a blood infection. Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, corroborated to TMZ that she had sepsis. Those immediate causes are not incompatible with an AIDS diagnosis, given that AIDS is a designation meaning that a person has a weakened immune system.

Schwallier also told the New York Times that, prior to her death, she had been homeless. He also said that Chase had used drugs since she was about 13 years old and that they hadn’t spoken since she was 19.

HIV and homelessness have a reciprocal relationship: homelessness is considered a major risk factor for acquiring HIV, while having HIV also puts people at greater risk of being without a home. Unhoused people who acquire HIV also often have worse health outcomes than those who are housed and living with HIV.

Chase stopped acting in 2016 and was charged with riding in a stolen BMW in 2017 and with possession of a controlled substance a year later.

Chase was born in 1990 in Las Vegas, but a few weeks after her birth, her family moved her to Albany, Oregon. She was home-schooled and won the Little Miss Oregon pageant at 6 years old, per the New York Times.

Prior to her death, Hernandez set up a GoFundMe in which he described Chase as having a “difficult childhood” and a “painful falling out with her family.”

“When we met, I promised to protect her and give her the love and comfort she deserved,” he wrote. “Together, we found moments of happiness and hope.”

Hernandez wrote about Chase’s diagnoses with meningitis and said that doctors had told her she did “not have much time left.”

“Now, more than ever, I want to give her that sense of home and peace in her final days,” he wrote. “I understand we all go through things, but if you can help, I will be really grateful for anything. And if you can only give a prayer, I will take that too.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/daveigh-chase-lilo-stich-dead-aids on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 29, 2026, 5:49 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Kansas Anti-Trans Law Forced Her License to Say Male. Then a Cop Questioned It and She Was Charged

Kris Ripper said she changed her Kansas license because the state required it. Then a traffic stop over headlights turned into questions about whether her ID was valid.

A Kansas police officer pulls over a red BMW.Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.

Kansas has dropped charges against a transgender woman who faced jail time for driving with a license that she had been forced by state law to use.

Kris Ripper, a trans woman, told Transitics that she was pulled over on May 5 while driving home from work in the rain after her car’s headlights automatically turned off. The officer, she said, questioned whether her license was real because it identified her as male. Ripper had changed the gender marker on her license March 25 to comply with Senate Bill 244, a draconian anti-trans law enacted in Kansas.

Related: Kansas law voids some transgender drivers’ licenses while leaving others in limbo

But she later received a notice for failure to appear for an arraignment on a charge of operating a motor vehicle without a valid license, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. County prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charge, but only after the story garnered international attention in LGBTQ+ media and after Ripper described the emotional impact of being threatened with jail time over a charge she said she did not know existed.

“I’m just a little scared and freaking out,” Ripper had told Transitics after receiving the notice.

The case illustrates the consequences of Kansas’ law even for transgender residents who try to comply with it. Ripper previously had a driver’s license with a gender marker that matched her identity. But the state-required change meant her license no longer aligned with her gender presentation, creating confusion during the traffic stop and later in the court system.

Ripper said the license confusion caused the initial traffic stop to take an extended amount of time.

“After seeing my license, he spent like 10 minutes questioning me on if my license was real before I explained to him that I am a transgender woman,” Ripper said. “It has to say ‘M’ legally.”

Ripper said the officer returned her license and let her go with a verbal warning. She said she was not issued a citation. The notice she later received said that if she did not appear within 30 days, her license would be revoked, according to Transitics, which reviewed the document.

Related: Lyft steps in to offer rides after Kansas voids transgender residents’ driver’s licenses

The Kansas Department of Revenue sent letters to transgender drivers earlier this year invalidating licenses that did not list what the state calls a person’s “biological sex.” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has defended the law in court, arguing that driver’s licenses must contain “objective, accurate” sex information because they are used to identify people, including in interactions with law enforcement.

David Brown, an attorney representing a trans client suing the state over the law, predicted months ago that problems would arise with enforcement.

“When people who are trans are forced to produce a driver’s license that indicates a gender that is not the gender they present as, it puts them in all sorts of awkward positions,” Brown previously told The Advocate.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/kansas-transgender-license-law on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 29, 2026, 2:56 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

“It's Coming From the Top”: Trump's EEOC Abandons Trans Man's Workplace Discrimination Case

A federal investigator told Flint Del Sol in an email obtained by The Advocate why the agency could no longer move forward with his workplace discrimination case.

Flint Del Sol is an educator and author who filed an EEOC complaint. The Trump administration says it won't move forward with the workplace discrimination case because he's transgender.Flint Del Sol

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.

Flint Del Sol thought the government might tell him no. He did not expect it to say the quiet part in writing.

For nearly three years, Del Sol, an educator and author, had been pursuing a workplace discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against his former employer, a Southern California school district where he taught for more than a decade. As a transgender man, he says he filed the complaint after years of threats, scrutiny, and what he described as discriminatory treatment tied to his transition and his advocacy for LGBTQ+ students.

Related: EEOC won't advocate for trans and nonbinary people, in keeping with Trump's 'two sexes' order

'It's coming from the chain of command'

Then, on Tuesday, he said, an EEOC investigator called with an update. The agency could no longer move forward.

“I’m sorry to let you know, but we are not pursuing transgender discrimination cases,” Del Sol recalled the investigator telling him. “It’s coming from the top.”

Del Sol asked the investigator to confirm the conversation by email. The response, reviewed by The Advocate, was a gut punch.

“That is correct,” the investigator wrote. “We are not permitted to conduct/continue any investigation regarding transgender cases, and that is coming from the chain of command.”

Flint Del Sol received an email from an investigator with the EEOC that said that his discrimination case investigation would not move forward because those at the top have said that transgender people's claims cannot continue. Email obtained by The Advocate

The investigator said Del Sol’s immediate federal right-to-sue request would be issued in the coming weeks and that he could use it to pursue his allegations in federal court. The letter must be used within 90 days of issuance, the investigator wrote.

“I wasn’t just being shuffled to the bottom,” Del Sol told The Advocate. “I was being told outright that I wasn’t worth protecting.”

The Advocate requested comment from the EEOC on Friday, asking whether investigators have been instructed not to conduct or continue investigations involving transgender discrimination claims and how such a directive could be reconciled with Title VII and the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that federal employment law protects workers from being fired for being gay or transgender.

The EEOC did not answer any of The Advocate’s questions, citing confidentiality. "Under federal law, both charges filed with, and charge inquiries made to the EEOC are confidential," an EEOC spokesperson wrote. "The EEOC can neither confirm nor deny the existence [of] any charge or charge inquiry."

Related: Federal workplace rights agency says Trump’s government can limit transgender employees’ bathroom usage

A target in his own classroom

Del Sol filed his EEOC complaint after leaving the school district where, he said, his transition and support for LGBTQ+ students made him a target. He had built an LGBTQ+ student library and advised an LGBTQ+ student club. The work brought attention, including from Fox News, and then threats.

He said threatening letters were mailed to the school and placed in his mailbox. People called the school, threatening violence. One instance, he said, involved a bomb threat to his classroom.

“I didn’t know about it until I got to school and there was a police officer in my classroom telling me that they were going to do a scan to try to see if there was an explosive device in my room,” he said. “And I thought they were going to cancel class or send me home, and they just moved me to another room and had me keep teaching.”

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He also described a district employee going through his classroom library and removing LGBTQ+ books that officials believed could cause problems. “What happened to me in my school district,” Del Sol said, “I really wanted for it to never happen to another teacher again.”

He filed with the EEOC in November 2023 and refiled in May 2024 after some of his claims fell outside the three-year filing window. He said the agency accepted the complaint and began the investigation process.

“I wasn’t very hopeful,” he said. “And then when they reviewed my case, they accepted it, and they said they were going to start the investigation process.”

Related: LGBTQ+ employees now have more trouble fighting harassment in the workplace

Then the rules changed

That entire sequence — the filing, the refiling, the acceptance, the investigation — happened under the rules as they were under the Biden administration. Then the rules changed.

Before President Donald Trump returned to office, gender identity was an accepted basis for an EEOC complaint. In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the federal government would recognize only two sexes and directing agencies to remove policies and materials the administration characterized as promoting “gender ideology.”

Flint Del Sol (right) compares his tattoos to those of ACLU attorney Chase Strangio. Courtesy Flint Del Sol

Under EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, the agency moved swiftly to comply, dropping its own pending lawsuits on behalf of transgender workers, rescinding Biden-era guidance that said misgendering or denying bathroom access consistent with gender identity could constitute unlawful workplace harassment, and routing gender identity complaints to headquarters for review. Lucas has defended the shift as a matter of fidelity to the law's text. “Biology is not bigotry,” she said in an early statement, pledging to defend “the biological and binary reality of sex.”

Critics say the posture defies the Supreme Court, since Bostock left gender identity discrimination actionable under Title VII regardless of how the agency spends its resources. So far, the courts have largely declined to intervene. On June 12, a federal judge in Maryland dismissed a lawsuit challenging what advocates call the agency’s “Trans Exclusion Policy,” ruling that the commission’s decisions about which cases to pursue are discretionary and unreviewable, even as the judge called the policy “deeply troubling.” For someone in Del Sol’s position, it means the right to sue may be the only path left, and not a guaranteed one.

Legal experts weigh in

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights, said the agency’s stance cannot be squared with the law. "The EEOC's decision directly conflicts with controlling Supreme Court precedent in Bostock," Minter told The Advocate. "The agency is openly defying the Supreme Court and refusing to apply the law."

The practical effect, Minter said, is to shift the cost of enforcement onto the very people the agency exists to protect. "This puts the burden on individuals to pay to pursue their own private lawsuits. The function of the EEOC is to avoid putting that burden on private individuals, and to ensure that our nation's employment discrimination laws are fully and fairly enforced."

Minter also stressed the stakes of the clock now facing Del Sol and others like him: "Once you receive a right-to-sue letter, you have 90 days to file a lawsuit. That is a strict deadline. If you do not file within those 90 days, you will miss your opportunity to bring a case."

Gregory Nevins, senior counsel and director of the Employment Fairness Project at Lambda Legal, said Del Sol's experience fits a clear pattern. "From the very outset, they moved to dismiss every transgender case that they were already involved in," he said, noting that when the EEOC abandoned those suits, private lawyers and advocacy groups stepped in to represent the workers it left behind.

Nevins drew a distinction between the agency's broad latitude over which cases to pursue and the policy now in place. The EEOC has always had wide discretion to set enforcement priorities, he said, "it's okay to have priorities” — but that is different from a categorical refusal. "That doesn't mean it's okay to adopt a blanket position like, 'Oh, we won't take any cases on behalf of this group or that group.' That's not okay."

The difficulty, he said, is that courts have historically treated such enforcement choices as committed to an agency's discretion and have been reluctant to second-guess them, which is why a decision that would normally reflect real needs in the workforce can instead be wielded, in his words, "as a political bludgeon against a particular group of people that are protected by Title VII."

Related: Lawsuit challenges EEOC's failure to investigate anti-transgender discrimination

'I felt nothing'

Del Sol said he understood his case had likely been abandoned after the administration’s shift. But hearing it directly from an investigator, and then reading it in writing, felt different.

“No one pretends that anti-trans discrimination isn’t happening,” he said. “We know discrimination happens, but usually they don’t tell you that they’re doing it.”

After the call ended, Del Sol had about 10 minutes before he had to teach a class. He is now teaching in higher education in New Mexico. He said he did what he had done so many times before: Put the feeling away and go to work.

“The reason I felt broken was that I felt nothing,” he said. “That’s when you know that something is disconnected.”

In an Instagram post that has drawn tens of thousands of likes, Del Sol described the call as one that “might have actually broken me.” He wrote that all of his jobs now feel “a little bit like a hostage situation."

He told The Advocate that feeling comes from knowing how much of American life depends on employment. “In this country, everything is tied to employment,” he wrote in his post. “I will likely never have a future employer who does not know that I am trans.”

Related: Trump administration moves to strip transgender people of employment discrimination protections

The man who wrote the guide

There is a particular cruelty to where Del Sol now finds himself. He is, almost literally, the person who wrote the guide. His book, Teach Like an Ally: An Educator’s Guide to Nurturing LGBTQ+ Students, draws on more than a decade in the classroom and his experience coming out as trans on the job allowed him to walk other teachers through the exact questions now being legislated across the country — what to do when a student uses one name at school and another at home, how a bathroom policy can quietly harm the most vulnerable kids, what to do when a teacher’s values collide with school policy. A follow-up workbook, based on interviews with 11 educators working to support LGBTQ+ students in hostile states, is due at the end of August.

Flint Del Sol and his husband Xilo Del Sol. Flint Del Sol

That work is part of why he says he feels an obligation to use the right-to-sue notice once it arrives, even though the timeline is punishing. He has 90 days to find representation, assess the case, and decide whether to file a lawsuit against his former employer in federal court. He is out of the job now, with a steady income and a working husband. Many of the people writing to him have neither.

“I think it would be insulting to every other trans person who’s facing discrimination for me not to take the position I’m in, which is one of relative privilege,” he said. “All I ever wanted was the chance to try to fight against a system that abandoned us when it was inconvenient.”

He often thinks about the students who cannot picture a future. Early in his New Mexico job, Del Sol decided to stay closeted, but abandoned the effort three weeks in, after a student came out to him in a journal on the first day of class.

“This kid decided to show up completely as himself,” he said. “I owe him me.”

'Is this my life now?'

For Del Sol, the EEOC email became a document of the moment, a record that a federal civil rights agency had said, plainly, that it could not continue investigating transgender discrimination cases.

“I wanted a physical thing that existed in the world that proved that this moment happened,” Del Sol said. “I wanted you to either deny it or I want you to tell me in your words that this is happening from our government. And he did.”

Del Sol said he keeps turning over a harder question about the investigator himself — how someone whose job is to help people facing discrimination ends up sending an email telling a person that discrimination against them will go unexamined. His anger, he said, is his own, and he is wary of misdirecting it at someone who could not change the outcome. He compared it to the teachers he interviewed for his forthcoming book, educators in hostile states who quietly rename a banned student club or find ways to avoid misgendering a kid — small acts that bend a system without breaking with it.

Maybe, he said, putting the directive in writing was that investigator's version of the same thing. "Maybe this agent for the EEOC, by putting this in writing, is the thing that he's doing," Del Sol said. He can't know. But he wonders whether the confirmation he now holds was, in its own small way, an act of resistance.

Del Sol said he has received messages from other transgender people who say their own EEOC cases have stalled or disappeared.

“There’s this feeling where we know that we’re likely facing discrimination, but there’s no way to prove it, and there’s no way to move forward with it,” he said. “And you just have to wonder, is this my life now?”

Even so, Del Sol said he does not regret being out.

“I wouldn’t trade my life with any other version of what I could have had,” he said. “There’s no version of me that wants to go back to who I could have been.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/trump-eeoc-transgender-investigations on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 29, 2026, 1:48 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Daughters of the American Revolution Live Up to Their Name by Rejecting Ban on Trans Women

“Transgender Americans are patriots, family members, volunteers, historians, and descendants of Revolutionary War ancestors just like anyone else.”

Brian Stukes/Getty Images

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The Daughters of the American Revolution officially rejected a proposed ban on transgender women from joining the organization on June 26.

The long-awaited vote came after years of pressure within the DAR — a nonprofit historical preservation and education society created in 1890, composed of women with direct ancestry to soldiers in the American Revolutionary War — to exclude trans women from the organization’s definition of “woman,” which would effectively ban them from its ranks.

In 2023, the DAR officially amended their guidelines to include language that protects trans members against discrimination in the application process, per The Washingtonian.

“Some have asked if this means a transgender woman can join DAR or if this means that DAR chapters have previously welcomed transgender women,” Pamela Rouse Wright, President of the DAR, wrote in a newsletter on the bylaws. “The answer to both questions is, yes.”

“The new language does not change the criteria for membership,” DAR spokesperson Bren Landon confirmed to Newsweek.

After right-wing media outlets picked up the story with an anti-trans angle, implying there was a policy change that suddenly allowed trans women to join, rather than a clarification of existing bylaws, a group of DAR members began lobbying to ban trans women from the organization. A small percentage of members even left the organization after DAR leadership made it clear that trans members were welcome, per The Washingtonian.

The DAR governing body rejected the first official proposal for bylaw amendments that would ban trans women in February 2025, after its Texas chapter put them forward. After national lobbying from a group of members called Daughters Advocating for Restoration, which claims to advocate for “preservation of Historic American Societies for Women,” the proposed bylaw amendments that would exclude trans women from the DAR’s definition of women were added to matters put to a national member vote.

Laura McDonald, a member of the DAR leading the effort told IW Features that the group’s goal was to “close the loophole that allows men who self-identify as women to be eligible for membership,” deploying a common rhetorical dog whistle used by anti-trans actors to advocate for the expulsion of trans women from public life. As a result of the anti-trans lobbying, Daughters for Inclusivity, a group of DAR members fighting back on the anti-trans effort to push trans women out of the organization, was formed in response. “I cannot fathom that a group formed because of prejudice against women is now doing the same thing to our trans sisters,” one member wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “The irony is mind blowing to me.”

The matter officially came to a head on Friday at the 135th Continental Congress, where members voted 1,481-984 against defining woman as “born female,” allowing trans members of the DAR to remain.

“The movement against discrimination within the DAR is not about “special treatment” or changing history. It is about treating every applicant and every member with dignity and respect,” another member wrote in the group’s Facebook page. “Transgender Americans are patriots, family members, volunteers, historians, and descendants of Revolutionary War ancestors just like anyone else. Excluding or targeting people because of their gender identity contradicts the values of respect, service, and sisterhood that the DAR claims to uphold.”

Among the allies celebrating the anti-trans effort being struck down in the Daughters for Inclusivity Facebook group, trans DAR members shared their relief and joy.

“I am one of those trans daughters,” Teagan Livingston, a DAR member since 2022, wrote. “The comments I’m reading in this group offer hope. Although I likely don’t know any of you, thank you so very much for being such steadfast allies. In this current political climate, you’ve no idea how very much that means to me and other trans daughters!”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/daughters-american-revolution-transgender-vote on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 29, 2026, 12:26 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Anti-LGBTQ+ Florida Lawmaker Caught Claude-Handed Using AI to Draft Legislation

In addition to opposing care for trans youth, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has criticized Pete Buttigieg for using parental leave.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

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A Republican Florida lawmaker with a history of anti-LGBTQ+ stances got caught using Claude, an AI assistant built by Anthropic, to draft a summary of an amendment she proposed to existing legislation.

Washington Post reporter John Hudson first shared Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s alleged use of AI on social media on Wednesday with the caption, “tfw you used Claude to write your NDAA amendment but forgot to hide your tracks.” The summary of the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act clearly included a line that read, “11:25 AM???? Claude responded:” before launching into a summary of the amendment. That line has since been removed.

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Luna’s proposed amendment would redirect Department of Defense resources to the U.S.’s Southwest border, per Forbes.

Luna defended the use of AI on X shortly after the snafu went viral.

“FYI NO Legislation is ever drafted with AI,” she wrote. “All bill text from the House comes from the House Legislative Council which is prohibited from using AI. The screenshot you’re referencing is an AI summary of the bill that’s also used for spellcheck, cmon man.”

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Per Forbes, no other legislators have yet to comment on the use of AI to write a draft of a bill summary or whether such practice is now common in the U.S. Congress.

Luna later joked about the incident on social media. She shared a screenshot of the Forbes article about her team’s use of Claude with the caption: “While we’re at it let’s use AI to audit Congress because clearly there’s a lot of corruption here.”

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Luna has a staunch history of anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, including looking to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth and criticizing Pete Buttigieg for taking parental leave to care for his newborn son.

“Pete Buttigieg got maternity leave and I didn’t. And he’s a dude. It’s time Congress gets with the times,” Luna wrote on X in 2024, per the Advocate. Buttigieg’s husband Chasten later responded to Luna by saying, “Every parent deserves parental leave. Those first weeks are so crucial for parents and newborns.” He continued, “What a shame to see Representative Luna tarnish this bipartisan effort with unnecessary homophobia. ‘Getting with the times’ would serve you well, Congresswoman.”

Unfortunately, queerphobia and AI are a potent mix. A report from GLAAD released earlier this month showed that AI can reinforce anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and bias. Researchers behind the 2026 Build for Everyone report found that AI gave misinformation on LGBTQ+ issues and made discriminatory decisions, including chatbots that recommended conversion therapy to content moderation that stifled LGBTQ+ voices.

They also found that AI systems raise data privacy concerns for LGBTQ+ people, especially in countries where they can face legal pushback simply for being queer or trans.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/anna-paulina-luna-ai-lawmaker on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 29, 2026, 10:14 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Clavicular’s Audience Is Extremely Paranoid He May Have Kissed a Trans Woman on Stream

Despite the rumor being debunked, some of his fans are now transvestigating a cisgender model he kissed in Paris.

PARIS, FRANCE - JUNE 23: Clavicular is seen outside 424 during Day One of Paris Fashion Week - Menswear Spring/Summer 2027 on June 23, 2026 in Paris, France. (Photo by Christian Vierig/Getty Images)Christian Vierig/Getty Images

Looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular, legal name Braden Eric Peters, went viral over the weekend for allegedly kissing a transgender woman during his ongoing livestream. However, that’s not the case.

On Friday, June 27, a viral clip from the livestream capturing Clavicular’s stint in Paris — where he made his Fashion Week debut but has received the equivalent of a shrug as a reception from the French citizenry — showed him speaking to two women who he met outside a club and clearly asking if one of them was trans.

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“It’s no disrespect whatsoever, but are you …” Clavicular begins to ask before mouthing to ask if she is trans. The woman leans in closer to him, and Clavicular continues, “They’re saying …” and although he lowers his voice, the footage clearly shows him mouthing the word “trans” in her ear.

“You are? I was wondering. I don’t give a fuck, but like …” he continues. The viral clip then cuts to him kissing one of the two women he spoke to on the dance floor. Several of the clips made about the encounter assumed that Clavicular was kissing the woman he had asked about being trans, but in fact the two friends outside the club were wearing the same dress.

Initial reaction to the viral video on social media made it seem as though the woman in the video was kissing Clavicular without telling him she was trans — a time-worn transphobic trope meant to depict trans people as deceptive. The myth that trans people routinely hide their gender identity to engage in sexual or romantic encounters has been used to justify the trans panic defense, a legal strategy that claims violence against trans people is more excusable if an assailant feels “tricked” by a trans person — and one that is now illegal in 20 states, per the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association.

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However, after the clip went viral over the weekend, users on the social media platform X added a community note to the clip identifying the woman in the kissing clip as Adelaide Pali, a cisgender model from Albania.

One of the original accounts that claimed Pali was trans posted a screenshot of an alleged DM conversation between himself and Pali, in which she appears to correct his original tweet by saying that she is Albanian, not Polish, and cisgender, not trans.

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Despite the original user posting the clarification, several people were unsatisfied and instead began to transvestigate Pali, making claims about her facial features.

“im lowkey an expert at clocking trans,” one user said. “a couple of the giveaways are the protruding brow ridge, pointer finger being shorter than the middle & ring finger. clavicle looks manly along with the above average height, looks like she had alot of work done.”

Another clip, shortly after the kiss, from that same night shows a friend of Clavicular leaning in and asking him, “Was one of them trans?”

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“Uh…” Clavicular begins to respond before taking off his microphone. After Clavicular whispers in his ear, his friend says, “Beautiful!” to which Clavicular responds, “Nobody’s business.”

In a livestream from the next morning, Clavicular addressed the incident, as well, saying that “Everyone’s clickbaiting me on Twitter” adding that people are claiming that he was with a “tranny,” using a transphobic slur.

Clavicular further claimed that he brought both women back to his hotel room.

“Everyone’s going to say cap on this,” he begins, before saying that he brought both women back to his hotel room and “kicked it.”

“The girls were outside … well, maybe not plural girls,” Clavicular says, laughing. “Maybe singular. But regardless, we brought them back and kicked it. I didn’t slay or nothing, I was just hanging with the one real one and then obviously the clippers were trolling me hard, so fuck you guys. I was only talking to the one. The clippers did me dirty there.”

The following morning, Clavicular addressed the subject once again, saying that he knew that Pali’s friend was trans.

“I knew right away,” he said. “I literally like 0.5 seconds. She said that I was the first person who’s ever noticed.” However, he once again negged her — the morning after — by saying he was probably just the first “low inhib” person to ever ask.

Clavicular has had several interactions with trans women, or women that he believes are trans, on his livestreams before. Notably, in April, a crew of three trans women confronted him at a Florida restaurant and told him that trans women were the OG looksmaxxers. He also had a date with a woman on his livestream and continuously pushed her to say that she is trans, even though she insisted that she was cisgender.

A week after his confrontation with the OG looksmaxxers, Clavicular approached two women in a public mall hoping to hit on them. Once he found out they were trans, he walked away and laughed.

Clavicular was arrested on a battery charge in March for allegedly instigating and recording a fight between two women at his Florida home. One of the women was his 24-year-old girlfriend Violet Marie Lentz, per the BBC. In May, he was charged with unlawfully discharging a firearm in public after he fired a dozen shots at an alligator while livestreaming, per the New York Times.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/clavicular-trans-model-stream-interaction on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 26, 2026, 5:36 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Ringleader in Torture and Killing of Trans Man Sam Nordquist Pleads Guilty

Precious Arzuaga, 38, entered a guilty plea to all charges, including first-degree murder.

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This story contains graphic and highly disturbing details about the torture and violent murder of a Black transgender man.

Precious Arzuaga, a 38-year-old woman whom prosecutors say acted as the “ringleader” in the torture and violent murder of Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old Black transgender man, pleaded guilty to all charges against her today, including first-degree murder, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual abuse.

In September 28, 2024, Nordquist traveled from his home state of Minnesota to Ontario County in upstate New York, where he planned to meet his online girlfriend Arzuaga, and return two weeks later. Linda Nordquist said her son never returned as planned. Instead, investigators say Nordquist was subjected to months of “depraved” torture by Arzuaga, her son, and a network of five friends and associates, ranging in age from 19 to 33 years old. Nordquist was found dead and wrapped in plastic in a field on February 13, 2025.

According to a grand jury indictment on March 5, 2025 that described graphic details about his death, the group allegedly spent weeks hitting Nordquist, beating him with objects, and sexually assaulting him, in addition to forcing him to consume urine and human feces. The charges Arzuaga pleaded guilty to in Ontario County Court include two counts of coercion in the first degree for forcing a seven-year-old and 12-year-old child to watch and participate in the torture.

Less than a week after local police began investigating the missing persons case requested by his family, Nordquist’s remains were found in Yates County. Ontario County District Attorney James Ritts called the case “by far the worst homicide investigation that our office has ever been part of” during a press conference immediately following the discovery of Nordquist’s body.

“No human being should have to endure what Sam endured,” Ritts said.

Arzuaga is scheduled to be sentenced on September 4, likely to life in prison without parole, for charges of first-degree murder, aggravated sexual assault, concealment of a human corpse, kidnapping, conspiracy, coercion, and endangering the welfare of a child. According to William Smith, Arzuaga’s attorney, there was no plea deal offered in exchange; rather, he said “she accepted responsibility” in comments reported by WHAM.

Nordquist's sister Kayla, who travelled from Minnesota to be present for the trial, told the local ABC affiliate that being in court was “the most awful thing I ever had to do.” Despite Arzuaga’s guilty plea, Kayla says that she doesn’t believe the defendants were fully honest about the full extent of the crimes they committed against Nordquist.

“I don’t know why she all of a sudden feels guilty,” Kayla Nordquist told the station. “She wasn't guilty when she was raping him and beating him and starving him. She didn’t feel guilty then. I don’t believe she feels guilty now.”

“I loved him, and I still love him. He mattered and he still matters,” she continued. “I want the world to know Sam Nordquist’s name. He was a genuinely good person and he did not deserve this.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/sam-nordquist-guilty-plea-precious-arzuaga on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 26, 2026, 5:07 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Pete Buttigieg Was Separated From His Children After False CPS Report Targeted His Family

Michigan State Police said it received an anonymous report and determined it was false. Buttigieg said the ordeal forced him to spend a night away from his and Chasten Buttigieg’s 4-year-old twins.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (R) and husband Chasten Buttigieg and their children Penelope and Gus attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 10, 2023 in Washington, DC.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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This story originally appeared on The Advocate.

Pete Buttigieg said Friday that an anonymous child protective services allegation brought police and a Child Protective Services worker to his family’s home this week, forced his 4-year-old twins into forensic interviews, and left him briefly separated from them before authorities concluded the report was false.

In a deeply personal Substack post titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family,” the former transportation secretary described the incident as a “cruel, politically motivated hoax” that invaded his home, frightened his family, and pulled his children into the brutal machinery of American politics.

“Someone decided to hurt our family this week,” Buttigieg wrote. “I’m furious, and I want to share what happened.”

In a statement to The Advocate, Michigan State Police said it received an anonymous report this week and referred the matter to Child Protective Services.

“The Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services responded and determined the report was false,” the agency said in a statement provided by Shanon Banner, director of the department’s Communications and Outreach Division. “False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families.”

Buttigieg, the first out gay Cabinet secretary confirmed by the U.S. Senate, wrote that a police officer and CPS worker came to his home and told him there had been an allegation against him involving his and husband Chasten Buttigieg’s twins. He said he was told a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the next day, that no family member could be present, and that he would not learn the nature of the allegation until after the interviews were completed.

Then, Buttigieg wrote, the CPS worker told him he should not be alone with his children until the interview.

“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life,” he wrote.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Buttigieg was forced to spend a night away from his children and that a Michigan State Police officer and a child protective services worker came to the family’s home after the anonymous report.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services forwarded The Advocate’s inquiry to Michigan State Police.

Buttigieg said the anonymous caller claimed to have spoken to a woman who alleged she had met him at a conference years earlier in Alabama, where she said Buttigieg had confessed to “unspeakable violent crimes.” Buttigieg wrote that the officer asked whether he had ever been to the town where the woman claimed she had met him. Buttigieg said he had not.

“The officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. He said the CPS worker also indicated that she had found nothing to substantiate the allegation, though the agency's process would take longer to complete formally.

The post describes an escalating threat to public figures and their families. Buttigieg compared it to swatting, in which someone makes a false emergency report intended to send armed police to a target’s home. In this case, he wrote, the child welfare system was used instead.

“Even so, this is different,” he wrote. “My in-laws had to explain to my children, whom we have taught to avoid talking to strangers, that they would need to have a conversation, one at a time and for nearly an hour each, in a place they’d never been, with adults they did not know, who would ask questions we weren’t allowed to know either.”

For years, Buttigieg’s family life has been treated by some Republican politicians and conservative media figures as political material. After Pete and Chasten Buttigieg adopted their twins, Republicans and right-wing commentators repeatedly mocked or criticized Buttigieg for taking parental leave while serving in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet.

Buttigieg and Chasten Buttigieg have long been targets of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, including attacks on their marriage, parenthood, and visibility as a same-sex family in national politics. Buttigieg wrote that the family is “used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family,” but said this was the first time someone had “managed to invade our lives like this — and drag our children into it.”

Buttigieg emphasized that the officer, CPS worker, and forensic interviewers were professional and “just following procedure,” writing that child welfare workers have difficult jobs protecting children from harm. In this case, he wrote, their time and resources were wasted by an allegation that authorities quickly rejected.

Buttigieg said making a false report is a crime and that he intends to pursue any available legal options.

“I don’t know how much we can do about it, but so help me God, if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will,” he wrote. “Not just for our own sakes but to draw a line that I thought everyone already recognized: do not mess with someone’s kids.”

A spokesperson for Pete Buttigieg told The Advocate that Buttigieg’s Substack post is his statement on the incident. The Advocate has reached out to Chasten Buttigieg for additional comment.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/buttigieg-family-cps-hoax on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 26, 2026, 11:40 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Nearly 40 Years Later, Minneapolis Repeals Bathhouse Ban

City council member Jason Chavez called it an important “first step” to the return of bathhouses.

Solovyova

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Following a 9-2 vote, the Minneapolis City Council voted Thursday to repeal the city’s longstanding ban on adult bathhouses, a nearly 40-year prohibition that dates back to the earliest days of the AIDS crisis, per MPR News.

The last bathhouse in operation in Minneapolis closed in 1988 during the height of the AIDS crisis, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Jason Chavez, the only out LGBTQ+ member of the council, co-authored the two ordinances required to repeal the ban and, during his remarks, invoked the name of Brian Coyle, a former out gay member of the Minneapolis City Council who voted to pass the ban in 1988, per MPR News. Coyle died in 1991 of AIDS-related complications.

“Today is the first step and it will not be the last. And it is an important one,” he said. “I believe if Brian Coyle was here with us today, with everything we know about public health, he would be standing with us proudly and me on this council so I would not feel alone taking this vote.”

Members of the council emphasized that the repeal of the ban does not mean that such facilities can open right away. Rather, now that the repeal is in place — awaiting a signature from Mayor Jacob Frey, who supports it — the council must now set up regulations for how the bathhouses can function.

Many are advocating for a similar framework to the guidelines implemented in San Francisco, with a focus on safety and public health, per the Star Tribune. That would include requirements for condom availability, monitoring, staff training, waste disposal, and facilities where people can shower.

“This won’t leave bathhouses in a gray area,” Chavez said, per the Star Tribune. “We still need to work on zoning, the safety and regulations. So bathhouses won’t be able to open tomorrow or next week.”

Council member Elizabeth Schaffer, who represents the neighborhood where the city holds its annual pride festival, voted to keep the ban in place and said that she had spoken to constituents who also opposed repealing it, including former Sen. Allan Spear, the first LGBTQ+ Minnesota state senator.

“My constituent has spent decades in this fight. He shared with me that many gay men in his own network either oppose the return of bathhouses or have real questions about whether this is the right path for a variety of reasons,” she said, per MPR News.

The road to the repeal began with the Minneapolis group known as the Safer Sex Spaces Coalition, which lobbied the city to remove language from the 1988 ordinance that specifically targeted queer people. After the language was removed in 2023, the group began to advocate for the repeal.

“Social science research tells us that commercial sex spaces, like gay saunas, are important for promoting safer sex and enhancing HIV prevention, testing, and treatment efforts,” an FAQ on the group’s website reads. “These spaces also enhance feelings of identity, camaraderie, authenticity, and belonging. They’re spaces where people can overcome isolation and develop a sense of community and pride.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/minneapolis-repeals-gay-bathhouse-ban on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 26, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

EXCLUSIVE: Zohran Mamdani Launches $15 Million Trans Care Investment: “New York City Is Stepping Up”

The funding comes amid a federal battle over gender-affirming care.

Natasha Moustache/Getty Images

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EXCLUSIVE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expanding access to gender-affirming care for transgender people across New York City, as the Trump administration moves to limit transition-related treatment for minors throughout the United States.

The Mamdani administration tells Them it will be launching a $15 million investment into three initiatives designed to safeguard access to gender-affirming care: a direct gender-affirming care access fund, a call and text line that will connect trans New Yorkers to available resources to receive care, and more funding for research on LGBTQ+ healthcare.

“Every New Yorker should have the freedom to live as themselves and access the health care they need,” Mamdani said in an exclusive with Them. “As the federal government attacks transgender people and attempts to intimidate patients, families and providers, New York City is stepping up. We will protect care, support the providers delivering it and make clear that trans New Yorkers belong in this city. Health care is a human right, and we will do everything in our power to defend it.”

The new expanded care initiatives for trans people come shortly after New York City’s June 11 amicus brief on June 11 supporting a lawsuit filed by trans patients and their families against NYU Langone Health to prevent the hospital system from disclosing private medical information to the Justice Department. Trump’s DOJ had criminally subpoenaed the major New York City hospital in May, demanding private medical information about trans patients of NYU who received gender-affirming care as minors between 2020 and 2026. On Wednesday, a federal judge granted an injunction temporarily blocking the DOJ subpoena of these sensitive medical records.

Because NYU Langone capitulated to the Trump administration’s attacks in February of this year — eliminating its program providing gender-affirming care to trans youth and citing the “current regulatory environment” as its reason for doing so — LGBTQ+ advocates in New York City have been fighting back. Earlier this week, the Gender Liberation Movement and over 20 NYC Pride grand marshals demanded that Pride celebrations this weekend bar hospital systems that stopped providing care to trans minors from participating.

On Thursday, however, the organizers of NYC Pride said they would allow both NYU Langone and Mount Sinai to participate in the march, saying that many “contingents, including those of local hospitals and healthcare systems are driven by the organization’s LGBTQ+ groups, not the leaders making system-wide decisions.”

The Mamdani administration’s latest expansion of gender-affirming care resources comes as LGBTQ+ New Yorkers await the finalization of the city budget in July

“This is the best news that we’ve heard all Pride Month,” NYC Council Member Justin E. Sanchez, Co-Chair of City Council's LGBTQIA+ Caucus, tells Them. “As fun the parades, balls, and celebrations have been, the work we do and the progress we continue to make in the face of adversity is what Pride is all about. I’d like to thank Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his understanding of the challenges that transgender people face every day, working with our Caucus, and delivering on his promise to protect them. As he and our Council finalize the budget, I look forward to more good news for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/zohran-mamdani-expands-access-to-gender-affirming-care on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 25, 2026, 1:49 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

WNBA Legend Angel McCoughtry Tells UFC President That Pride Nights Would Help Fighters Come Out

The league veteran responded to Dana White’s baffling excuse for not doing any LGBTQ+ initiatives in the UFC.

Getty Images

WNBA legend Angel McCoughtry is not having UFC President Dana White’s casual homophobia this Pride Month. The former Minnesota Lynx forward told TMZ that White’s excuse — namely that they just “don’t talk about that” in the UFC — is actively harmful.

In an interview with Tomi Lahren on June 23, when asked about whether or not the UFC would host Pride Nights like other major professional sports leagues, White said that while he doesn’t personally care what people do in their private life, he doesn’t believe it’s the job of the UFC to speak on LGBTQ+ issues.

“I’m staring at my roster of the top 15 fighters. I’m assuming we have some gay fighters,” he said. “I don’t know how many of them are openly [gay]. I know that we have gay female fighters. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care what you are, who you are, what you do. We don’t talk about that, any of that stuff.”

“Why is it a maybe? I’m sure you have gay male fighters,” McCoughtry told TMZ Live in response to White’s comments. “Why is there a difference there? That’s why we still have all of these men on the DL because it’s always this ‘maybe’ and this masculinity thing.”

When prompted further about White saying it isn’t his job to promote queer visibility, McCoughtry responded, “It is his job.”

“I know he doesn’t care what people do with their love life — which I agree on that — but we have different initiatives in our sports that we use to support people and groups,” she said. “We support the military, we support women in domestic violence; Pride week is [part] of that.”

McCoughtry reasoned that the UFC supporting initiatives like Pride Nights would also likely help closeted gay fighters feel comfortable coming out.

“He will probably see a lot of DL men — fighters — come out because they’re supporting  that initiative,” she said. “So yes, they need to have it. That’s why we have these initiatives to support people in these different groups [...] You don’t have to be gay to want to support Pride, to be a part of it, to go to the parties, to go to gay initiatives, and I think that’s the misinterpretation of it. You can just support, just because it’s something you want to support.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is in having Pride week in sports,” she added. “I think it’s pretty awesome.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/angel-mccoughtry-dana-white-pride-nights on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 24, 2026, 5:22 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Judge Blocks Trump DOJ From Seizing Trans Youths’ Medical Records From NYC Hospitals

The order protects patients of NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, and other New York City providers while their constitutional challenge proceeds.

A federal judge blocked the Justice Department from accessing trans patients' records at New York City hospitals.Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.

A federal judge handed Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union a significant victory on behalf of transgender young people and their families on Wednesday, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from obtaining identifying information and sensitive medical records belonging to people who received gender-affirming care as minors in New York City.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla restrained the Department of Justice from seeking, receiving, using, or disseminating the information through grand jury or administrative subpoenas. She also prohibited NYU Langone Health from turning over protected records.

Failla provisionally certified a class covering people who received treatment for gender dysphoria while younger than 18 at New York City health care institutions, including NYU Langone and Mount Sinai Health System, from January 1, 2020, through May 5, 2026.

Bluesky content

The ruling follows months of retreat by New York hospitals under federal pressure. NYU Langone ended its Transgender Youth Health Program in February after the administration threatened federal funding for institutions providing gender-affirming care to minors. Mount Sinai curtailed care days later. Then, in May, NYU Langone notified patients that federal prosecutors in Texas had subpoenaed records and provider identities, prompting three families and two young adults to sue before the hospital could disclose them.

The judge found that the patients would face irreparable harm without intervention and were substantially likely to prevail on claims that the subpoenas violated their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. Disclosure by NYU Langone would also likely breach New York’s physician-patient confidentiality protections, she concluded.

"The subpoena expressly targeting members of a particular and uniquely vulnerable group both shocks the conscience and rises to the level of the most egregious official conduct," Failla said during a hearing earlier in the day, according to Reuters.

Related: Families ask judge to block Trump DOJ nationwide from getting trans kids’ medical records

The Justice Department has said the records are connected to an investigation into possible drug “misbranding.” The plaintiffs argue that the inquiry is a pretext for the administration’s campaign to eliminate gender-affirming care.

“Using subpoenas to attain the identities and sensitive health information of transgender young people … should send chills down the spine of every American,” Lambda Legal attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said in a statement.

Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, said families should be able to trust doctors to protect their private information from “impermissible and harassing demands.”

Related: Judge blocks Trump DOJ’s latest effort to obtain medical records of transgender minors

“BREAKING: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s bid to seize the medical records of trans youth,” the ACLU wrote on Bluesky. “We’ll continue the fight to defend trans youth’s right to privacy and end this harassment for good.”

At least eight federal courts previously blocked similar administrative subpoenas, Lambda Legal said. The Justice Department then turned to criminal grand jury subpoenas issued from Texas.

The temporary order protects patients while Failla considers longer-term relief.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/trump-barred-trans-kids-records on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

POLITICS | JUN 24, 2026, 12:10 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Someone Help Josh Hawley Understand MLB’s Three-Page Rebuke to His Pride Tantrum

The GOP senator claimed the league “admitted they were wrong” to enforce its policy, which isn’t what happened.

Getty Images / MLB / Photo Illustration by Them

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After several San Francisco Giants players wrote Bible verses on their uniforms in apparent protest of an LGBTQ+ Pride Night event earlier this month, Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner Rob Manfred is defending the league’s decision to assert its policy against writing on uniforms.

Manfred responded this week to a June 16 letter from Missouri Senator Josh Hawley in which the lawmaker accused the league of engaging in religious discrimination for telling players not to write Bible verses on their uniforms. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.) The letter, sent shortly after news of the protest and the league’s subsequent reminder to the players became national news, accused the league of a “pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.”

Aside from facing heat from Hawley, assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon has also called for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate, citing concerns that the league’s warning constituted religious discrimination, per Fox News.

However, in his letter to Hawley this week, Manfred denied any charges of religious discrimination and instead explained to Hawley what it means to enforce a policy unilaterally. Saying that the league takes matters of discrimination “very seriously,” Manfred noted that the policy states that players may not “write, attach, affix, embroidered or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment” in order to avoid the “potential to offend some segment of our fanbase.”

“MLB’s policy must be uniformly enforced regardless of the message in order for it to survive legal challenge, which means prohibiting both the positive message and the negative message,” Manfred wrote in a letter, which Hawley posted to X on Monday. “By warning Giants players that they may not include Bible verses on their caps in the future, MLB was not discriminating or chastity those players based on their religious beliefs; rather MLB was enforcing (with only an oral warning) a long-standing, collectively bargained rule that keeps uniforms clean and avoids controversy.”

Manfred went on to explain that there are only 12 league-wide events where players are allowed to wear non-standard uniforms, but that both the LA Dodgers and San Francisco Giants requested that Pride Night, and the Pride uniforms, be grandfathered in due to the history of LGBTQ+ support in those specific cities. Manfred added that the league allowed both teams to have Pride uniforms but that players would not be required to wear them.

Manfred said that Giants leadership did not communicate this to the players; he called the communication “inadequate and not clear.”

“Some apparently did not understand that they had the option to wear their normal uniform and elected to add messages to their hates bearing the pride logo as a result,” Manfred wrote. Manfred wrote that though his office did reprimand the players, it did so before he found out that the policy had not been communicated to members of the Giants.

“The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be,” Manfred wrote. “MLB believes in the right of our players and fans to express their religious beliefs, and at the same time supports the communities in this country that are fans of Clubs, including the LGBTQ community.”

Despite receiving a three-page response that outlined the history and significance of the policy, all that Hawley seemed to glean, based on his tweet about the response letter, was the MLB “admitted they were wrong,” which clearly never happened. He also pointed out that the players would not be disciplined, which they were never going to be anyway, as Manfred noted.

X content

In the responses to his post, several pointed out that Hawley’s reading comprehension would barely pass muster in an SAT prep booklet.

“That isn’t what it says at all? It says they’re enforcing their policy that you’re not allowed to write on the hat, no matter how positive it is,” one person wrote.

“Hey, I think you accidentally uploaded the letter, which completely refutes the lie you were trying to tell,” another person wrote on X.

The controversy-stirring Pride Night game occurred on June 12 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. During the game, pitcher Landon Roupp took to the mound sporting a hat with Genesis 9:12-16 scribbled next to the Giants rainbow-soaked logo. The verses tell the Christian origin story of the rainbow as God’s covenant with Noah following the flooding of the world.

In part, the passage in the New International Version reads: “Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’”

In a post-game interview, Roupp explained why he wrote the verse.

“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy,” he said, per NBC Sports Bay Area. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want ... and express what we want."

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/mlb-josh-hawley-letter-senate on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

Health

- Shigella and TMVII: What You Need to Know to Prevent Emerging STIs This Summer

HEALTH | JUN 24, 2026, 11:57 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Shigella and TMVII: What You Need to Know to Prevent Emerging STIs This Summer

Cases of these emerging infections are rising. Here's what queer men should know about symptoms, testing, treatment, and protecting themselves this summer.

Photo2Photo/Shutterstock

This story originally appeared on Out.

Vasilios Papapitsios developed a rash on their groin that looked just like ringworm in February, but he knew it was something more. The artist, filmmaker, and HIV advocate, who uses they/he pronouns, stays up to date on emerging sexually transmitted infections and had read about a cluster of fungal cases in Minnesota reported in July 2025 that initially presented as ringworm, but were actually a newly discovered STI: trichophyton mentagrophytes genotype VII, colloquially known as TMVII.

The fungal infection, discovered as an STI in 2010 and first reported in the U.S. in 2024, can seem like other forms of ringworm such as jock itch or athlete’s foot at first. But it later transforms into a scaly rash and lesions on the groin, buttocks, and face. When Papapitsios suspected he had contracted it, he felt responsible to tell the people he had recently had sex with; he also needed to sound the alarm because, at the time, there was virtually no public health information available about how to minimize the spread of TMVII.

“It made me angry,” he says. “If I don't have information about something, then I want to find the information, and I want to let everybody know.”

Eventually, he was able to contact epidemiologists and sound the alarm to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about TMVII, but there is still much left to be desired about the response.

“If we had our institutions taking it more seriously, people would take it more seriously,” Papapitsios says.

As cases of new strains of treatment-resistant STIs like Shigella and novel illnesses like TMVII are increasingly reported, and disproportionately impact queer people, LGBTQ+ communities are scrambling to raise awareness about how to prevent spread, get tested, and find treatment. While there is a broader awareness about contact tracing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, STIs are still largely stigmatized and underreported. Adding to the challenge is the Trump administration’s active effort to dismantle public health institutions that previously mitigated these outbreaks, like the CDC.

The question of how we keep ourselves and each other “safe” in this anti-science environment is complicated. While the first instinct for many might be to lock down, an abstinence-based approach isn’t just unrealistic for many people; it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Stigma, lack of access to adequate testing, and medical queerphobia all make it more complicated to get answers and care.

Dr. Kaiyti Duffy, chief medical officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, says that stigmatizing these illnesses leads to people ignoring symptoms, which in turn causes underreporting as well as higher rates of treatment-resistant STIs.

“Social stigma related to sexual health and sexually transmitted infections prevents engagement,” Duffy says. “Delayed engagement for testing and treatment results in poorer outcomes and facilitates spread of infection. Furthermore, it promotes the development of resistant organisms. Just as TMVII tends to resist common topical antifungal medications, other infections like gonorrhea are starting to demonstrate further antibiotic resistance and concerning public health experts around the globe.”

To better understand how to have safe fun in your community this summer, here’s what to know about emerging STIs.

TMVII

TMVII is a fungal infection that can impact the skin, groin, buttocks, and face, presenting as other common rashes like ringworm or jock itch, but later evolving into painful, scaly areas on the skin. Unlike other forms of fungal infections, it can spread through close physical contact, including sex, and has been disproportionately reported among queer men. Sharing towels, clothing, bedding, or sex gear with someone who has TMVII can all be pathways for it to spread.

The long testing process for TMVII, as well as its treatment-resistant nature, are what make it important to stay vigilant for its symptoms, even if you think it might just be ringworm. Ask your doctor if you are concerned, especially if you have recently had sex with someone who has a similar rash.

“Avoid close skin contact until it’s evaluated and treated,” says Dr. Demetre C. Daskalakis, chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. “Keep skin clean and dry, don’t share towels or clothing, wash linens in hot water, and complete the full course of treatment if prescribed.”

Shigella

Shigella is a bacterial infection that affects the gut and can cause diarrhea, fever, and cramps. While it used to be disproportionately reported among schoolchildren and people without access to clean water, a treatment-resistant strain has recently cropped up in the U.S. among men who have sex with men. Experts say this is in part due to sex that involves the mouth and the anus, as this can be a pathway for the infection to spread.

“Prevention is really about layering protections,” Daskalakis says. “Handwashing with soap and water — especially after using the bathroom or before eating — matters a lot. Avoiding sex when someone has diarrhea, and washing hands, bodies, and sex toys before and after sex can significantly reduce risk.”

How do we keep each other safe?

Regardless of the STI, prevention isn’t about spreading fear or stigma. It boils down to taking care of each other through transparency, speaking up, and demanding that institutions take these illnesses seriously.

“The most important factor in sexual health is communication,” Duffy says. “Discussing recent testing, history, and type of protection usage, and any ongoing or recent symptoms can help protect not only you but those with whom you engage.”

Ultimately, experts say we need to put pressure on public health officials to keep us informed about how STIs impact our communities and provide resources to prevent their spread, rather than perpetuate shame.

“We need flexible, well‑funded systems that can respond quickly, and we need to meet people where they are with practical, nonjudgmental information,” Daskalakis says. “Safety isn’t about fear — it’s about access, knowledge, and care.”

This article is part of OUT’s July-Aug 2026 print issue, on newsstands July 7. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader starting June 18.

Hunter Doohan on the cover of Out's July/August 2026 print issue

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/tmvii-shigella-queer-men on Jul 1, 2026 at 6:42 AM EDT.

Table of Contents

Them.: 2026 Jun 30

Community

Them Pride Month Superlatives: Gillian Anderson Is “Mother of the Year”

“Hot Dykes Melt ICE”: Photos From the 2026 NYC Dyke March

News

Count Anderson Cooper Among the Journalists Who Don’t Wanna Work With Bari Weiss

Man Charged With Murder of Trans Student Juniper Blessing Found Incompetent to Stand Trial

States Can Ban Transgender Women and Girls From Sports, According to U.S. Supreme Court

Daveigh Chase, Star of ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and ‘Spirited Away,’ Died From AIDS Complications

Kansas Anti-Trans Law Forced Her License to Say Male. Then a Cop Questioned It and She Was Charged

“It's Coming From the Top”: Trump's EEOC Abandons Trans Man's Workplace Discrimination Case

Daughters of the American Revolution Live Up to Their Name by Rejecting Ban on Trans Women

Anti-LGBTQ+ Florida Lawmaker Caught Claude-Handed Using AI to Draft Legislation

Clavicular’s Audience Is Extremely Paranoid He May Have Kissed a Trans Woman on Stream

Ringleader in Torture and Killing of Trans Man Sam Nordquist Pleads Guilty

Pete Buttigieg Was Separated From His Children After False CPS Report Targeted His Family

Nearly 40 Years Later, Minneapolis Repeals Bathhouse Ban

Zohran Mamdani Launches $15 Million Trans Care Investment: “New York City Is Stepping Up”

WNBA Legend Angel McCoughtry Tells UFC President That Pride Nights Would Help Fighters Come Out

Judge Blocks Trump DOJ From Seizing Trans Youths’ Medical Records From NYC Hospitals

Someone Help Josh Hawley Understand MLB’s Three-Page Rebuke to His Pride Tantrum

Health

Shigella and TMVII: What You Need to Know to Prevent Emerging STIs This Summer