Precious Brady-Davis is no stranger to being a first. Could she take that to Congress?

She’s the only Black trans person currently in public office in the country, and her political profile is growing.

This story was originally reported by Kate Sosin of The 19th. Meet Kate and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Could she be the first Black trans person in Congress?

Every step Precious Brady-Davis has taken has been a first.

She was the first transgender bride on the TV show “Say Yes to the Dress.” She and her husband are the first transgender parents in Illinois history to be listed as their accurate genders on their children’s birth certificates.

“This idea of, ‘I won’t be erased,’ that’s something that brewed in my childhood,” she said. “I think that’s where the fight comes from. … I don’t want to fail, and I haven’t failed yet. I think that’s the scary part. I’ve never, ever had a floor beneath me.”

Brady-Davis is currently the only Black trans person holding public office in the United States, serving on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. She previously shared that title with Minneapolis City Councilor Andrea Jenkins, who retired in January.

And while water reclamation commissioner, a job that involves juggling budgets and managing wastewater and stormwater for Cook County, might not sound like a big title, those in the know are eyeing Brady-Davis carefully. She recently toured Washington, D.C., with Rep. Sarah McBride, who made history herself as the first trans person elected to Congress.

Brady-Davis doesn’t rule out the possibility of a congressional run. But she’s coy about her ambitions, talking around a bid for national office.

“For now, my focus is on being effective at the local level — but I’ve thought about how that work could expand to have a broader impact on issues like the environment, LGBTQ rights, and education,” she said.

“I absolutely think she could be a congressperson,” said Tracy Baim, co-founder of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ newspaper Windy City Times, who has watched Davis’ rise. “There’s no doubt in my mind she has the qualifications.”

Precious Brady-Davis sits at a desk with her hands raised as she speaks. A sign behind her reads, “We are not going back.” — *Precious Brady-Davis speaks during an interview in her office. (Erin Hooley/AP)*

Early life

Brady-Davis largely grew up with her grandparents but eventually wound up in foster care, where she was confronted with a version of Christianity that saw homosexuality as sinful.

In her memoir, “I Have Always Been Me,” Brady-Davis recalls going to a Pentecostal youth retreat and having a pastor call her out specifically: “I bind the foul spirit of homosexuality out of you,” she recalled him saying. “You are not a woman. You are a man.”

The preacher and others in the group lunged toward her; Brady-Davis later awoke prostrate on a kitchen floor, traumatized from the experience.

While she worked to conform for a while, as she learned about the world and herself, she gradually rejected those ideas. In college, she began performing in drag, first in her home state of Nebraska and then in Chicago.

At this time, two transitions were taking place. Brady-Davis was starting to live full-time as a woman. And her professional career was starting.

She took a job doing HIV prevention work among youth of color at Chicago’s Center on Halsted, the LGBTQ+ community center in the heart of Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, amid tension over violence at the 2011 Pride parade and the subsequent crackdown on crime.

Glass-fronted building with a sign reading “Center on Halsted” at street level. — Center on Halsted, an LGBTQ+ community center in Chicago’s Northalsted neighborhood, where Precious Brady-Davis worked in HIV prevention among youth of color early in her career.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)

The job would prove difficult to impossible. While residents were angry with the Center, youth advocates claimed that the Center over-policed young people, calling law enforcement on homeless kids looking for safe places to sleep. Brady-Davis was forced to defend an institution that was being attacked from all sides. It would be her first political test.

“I advocated for those young people the best I could,” she said. “It was just cruel. … When I think that something is wrong, I’m going to speak up about it.”

Baim said she watched Brady-Davis turn every challenge into an advance.

“Precious has managed to navigate so many of the land mines that others have not survived, and came from a very, very grassroots approach to the work, and has really reimagined herself for each iteration,” Baim said.

Brady-Davis would do a stint with About Face Theatre, the LGBTQ+ youth theatre troupe in Chicago, and then join the Sierra Club, where she eventually became northeast communications director and battled President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency during his first term.

It was work that made sense for her, she said.

“How can I say that my work is invested in diversity, equity and inclusion when I’m not working in all kinds of diversity?” she asked. “Environmental justice felt like another kind of diversity.”

A family legacy

During Brady-Davis’ stint at Center on Halsted, a young man came literally knocking at her door without an appointment. The man, Myles Brady, was bald and eager to chat. He wanted to get involved in programs with youths. He shared that he was transgender, too. The fact surprised Brady-Davis. But he was so talkative that Brady-Davis didn’t know what to make of him.

“Like it was weird to me, and I was very protective of the young people at the Center,” said Brady-Davis. She decided to never follow up with him again.

Brady was persistent. He kept appearing at events. One night he asked Brady-Davis to dinner. She reluctantly agreed.

“I was like, at least I’ll get dinner out of it, right?” she said laughing. “I was like, I’ll go on this date, and I’ll never have to see him again.”

But a few months later Brady-Davis was headed to the Philadelphia Health Conference. She got an email from Brady. “I can’t wait to see you in Philly,” it said.

The message struck her as cute. Later that night while she was out to dinner with trans friends Brady walked in and sat down. Brady-Davis didn’t know it, but he had been invited by others at the table. She was being set up. Brady told Brady-Davis she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and that he wanted to build a life with her and take care of her.

“I saw him so differently that night,” she said. “It was the first time that I truly saw him.”

The two left the conference together and have been together ever since. They were married in 2016, and Brady-Davis appeared on TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress,” the first transgender bride to be featured on the show.

“Myles and I have shown that two trans people can love each other and that we are worthy of love,” Brady-Davis told Buzzfeed News at the time.

Precious Brady-Davis and Myles Brady-Davis sit on the back of a convertible and wave to a crowd at the Chicago Pride Parade. Pride flags are visible throughout the crowd behind them. — Precious Brady-Davis and her husband, Myles Brady-Davis, wave to the crowd during the Chicago Pride Parade. The couple were the first transgender parents in Illinois history to be listed as their accurate genders on their children’s birth certificates. (Chicago Pride)

They had two daughters, Zayn and Zyon.

The birth of their first daughter, Zayn, provided another opportunity for advocacy. Brady, who was carrying the child, learned in 2019 that the state of Illinois would list him as a “mother” on the birth certificate and Brady-Davis as “father.” The two teamed up with Lambda Legal and petitioned the state, successfully changing the policy. Brady would be recognized as Zayn’s father, and Brady-Davis was listed as her mother.

“I always say it brings me the most joy to take my kids to school in the morning,” said Brady-Davis. “It’s one of the most normal things that I get to do as a human being. And it’s not about me being trans at all. It’s about me being a mom. …I’m proud of the ways in which I’m parenting my girls to be a part of a world that I hope is more inclusive, diverse.”

Into politics

Sierra Club positioned her well for her next big move, into electoral politics. In 2022, she vied for a spot as a commissioner on the Water Reclamation District. Though she fell short in the primary, the next year Gov. JB Pritzker appointed her to finish the term of the candidate who had beaten her, who had since joined the state legislature.

“Precious Brady-Davis distinguished herself as a trailblazer even before her historic appointment to public office in Cook County,” Pritzker said of Brady Davis in a statement to The 19th. “Throughout her political and nonprofit career, Precious consistently stepped up as the first — first to speak up for the LGBTQ+ community, first to share the story of her path to activism and public office, and first to encourage others to claim their seats at the table.”

Precious Brady-Davis stands at a podium with the seal of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, speaking into a microphone during a public meeting. — Precious Brady-Davis speaks at a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago board meeting. After being appointed to the board in 2023, Brady-Davis won her primary this year by large margins. (Courtesy of Precious Brady-Davis)

When time came for her reelection bid this year, Brady-Davis won her primary by large margins.

But whether she finishes her six-year term remains to be seen. Apart from her time in D.C. with McBride, she has been chatting up major political donors. McBride says she would not be surprised to see Brady-Davis serving alongside her in Congress.

“I think the sky is the limit for her, and she is someone who I respect deeply,” McBride said. “It was personally meaningful to walk these halls with a trailblazer whose story is only just beginning.”

2 Cornell Bird Lab Cams

Enjoy!

These birds dance:

DOJ Targets IL Schools For Teaching LGBTQ “Ideology”

On the last post I made about this I was going to write a long intro. However when I read the comments every point I would have made is made in the comments in far fewer words than I would have done. So if you wish to see opinions on what the government is doing to follow Russia and wipe the LGBTQ+ from society in the name of protecting children / straight people / cis people / and religious privilege to discriminate then please read the comments. Hugs

DOJ Targets IL Schools For Teaching LGBTQ “Ideology”

Trump DOJ investigating ‘gender ideology’ in 3 dozen Illinois school districts

Trump DOJ investigating ‘gender ideology’ in 3 dozen Illinois school districts

Feds cite Title IX, recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings as basis for inquiry

byHannah Meisel

May 1, 2026

Article Summary

The Trump administration is investigating three dozen Illinois school districts to assess if their curriculums include “gender ideology” — and parental opt-outs — and whether trans students can participate in competitive sports.

The districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of similar federal investigations since President Donald Trump began his second term last year.

The ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law.

This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

Three dozen Illinois school districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of federal investigations into whether the institutions teach about sexual orientation and “gender ideology,” and whether parents can opt out of such curriculum.

The inquiry, announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, will also “assess” whether the 35 school districts around the state, plus Chicago’s largest charter school network, allow transgender students to use single-sex bathrooms or participate in competitive sports.

The DOJ’s notice did not say what prompted the investigation or why the districts — which range from rural schools with extremely small enrollment to one of the largest districts in Illinois — and the agency did not respond to a request for clarification. More than half of the school districts are in the Chicago area, though the list does not include any of the large suburban school districts that have attracted attention in recent years for litigation over trans students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms.

Open interactive map in new tab

But Thursday’s announcement did point to a June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires school districts to allow opt-outs for LGBTQ-related lessons in the classroom, plus a more recent March ruling blocking a California policy that allowed schools to keep a student’s gender transition private from their parents.

“This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in the news release.

Dhillon, who advised Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and rose to prominence as the face of several unsuccessful lawsuits against California’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, is the administration’s key lawyer on civil rights issues. As assistant attorney general for civil rights, Dhillon oversees the “Title IX Special Investigations Team” — a joint effort between the DOJ and U.S. Department of Education that was launched last year.

“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: Parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” Dhillon said. “This includes exempting their children from ideological instruction that contradicts their values or decisions about their children’s health and best interests.”

In a statement, Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the inquiry as the Trump administration continuing to “punish states the president does not like,” calling it a “sham investigation.”

“The Civil Rights Division used to investigate actual discrimination concerns to ensure all individuals are treated equally under the law, but they’re now focused on belittling the rights and humanity of LGBTQ+ communities,” he said.

In 2019, Pritzker signed legislation requiring Illinois public schools’ history curriculum “include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this state,” but Thursday’s news release made no mention of the law.

String of investigations

The DOJ’s announcement is similar to more than a dozen from the Trump administration since the president began his second term last January, most citing Title IX, the sweeping 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

One of his first official acts back in power was signing an executive order dubbed “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which threatened to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”

That included school lunch funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the state of Maine found out in early 2025 after a public spat between the president and Gov. Janet Mills at the White House over the executive order. After the Department of Education launched an investigation into the state’s education agency and subsequently froze the funding, a judge ordered the USDA to unfreeze the funds, and the agency settled the suit.

In recent months, Trump’s DOJ and Department of Education have launched investigations into K-12 school districts and state education authorities in New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Maine again.

Inquiries announced last year in states like New York, Oregon and Washington are ongoing, though the administration has claimed it found evidence of violation of Title IX in Kansas and Colorado school districts. The administration has also launched, and in some cases wrapped up, similar assessments of public universities and community colleges.

ACLU of Illinois cites wrong interpretation

Ed Yohnka with the ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law, which he said are both “clear that students have an ability to play on sports teams and to use private areas consistent with their gender identity.”

Yohnka also said it was ironic that the Trump administration, brought to power by Republicans who generally oppose government overreach, was trying to limit local control of school districts.

“None of these schools need some ideological culture warrior in Washington, D.C., telling Watseka what their curriculum should be,” he said. “The notion that Justice Department is going to launch investigations and divert money for education because the president signed a piece of paper is just a misuse of our tax dollars.”

Yohnka said he wasn’t aware of any pattern among the three dozen districts the DOJ is investigating, but one school official from rural northwest Illinois has an “emerging operational theory.” In a social media post Friday, Oregon Community Unit School District 220 Superintendent PJ Caposey said he didn’t have “definitive answers” from the DOJ as to why his district was included, he posited it may have something to do with the districts’ participation in a federal School Violence Prevention Program grant.

“To be absolutely clear, this does not confirm that grant participation is the reason for inclusion, nor can we state that as fact,” he wrote. “It is simply one possible connection being explored as we work to better understand the broader picture.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Queer Book News For May!

Stick with the first entry; it gets there. Emphasis mine. Then, click on through for more books! (Always choose more books!)

May 2026 Queer Romances

by Dahlia Adler · Apr 30, 2026 at 11:50 pm

We’re nearing Pride Month, and you know what the means–the queer books will soon be visible, and this month is prepping us very well in a variety of genres.

Score

Author: Kennedy Ryan
Released: April 19, 2026 by Forever
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
Series: Hollywood Renaissance #2

A scorching second-chance romance between a talented screenwriter and a phenomenal musician from the New York Times bestselling author of Before I Let Go.

“A triumph of art and emotion.” —Talia Hibbert, New York Times bestselling author

You never forget your first love. Isn’t that what they say? Verity Hill knows this truth intimately. She didn’t simply miss Wright “Monk” Bellamy when they parted ways in college. She’s haunted by his touch. Every kiss, any lover since—it’s a shadow of what they had.

Time heals all wounds. Isn’t that what they say? Monk doesn’t believe that for a second. He wasn’t simply betrayed when he and Verity split. He was devastated, with parts of him left behind in the ruins of all that was destroyed.

More than a decade after their disastrous breakup, Verity and Monk must work together on the set of an epic Harlem Renaissance biopic. With Monk, now a world-class musician, creating the score, and Verity, an award-winning screenwriter, penning the script, there’s Oscar buzz before shooting even begins. This once-in-a-lifetime project could catapult them both to new heights, but can they can put the past behind them for the sake of the film … for the sake of something more?

Hard to imagine anyone reading a romance site doesn’t know when Queen Kennedy Ryan’s got a new book coming, but you may not have known that her newest–the second in the Hollywood Renaissance series–stars a bi female lead and features a steamy m/f/f threesome before we even hit chapter three. It’s a hard-won second chance as Verity and Monk find their way back to each other from then, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder for Verity in between, and because it’s Ryan, you know the story is treated with the respect and care it deserves. (Emph. mine-A.)

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

(snip-MORE)

John Fugelsang: Reclaiming Jesus’ Teachings

I love this video. John Fugelsang is a wonderful person to elaborate on the bible and he does so as a follower of Jesus, not Paul or the Old Testament. His mother was a nun and his father was a monk and the way he describes his father wearing his robes is as the Christian jedi of Flatbush. He explains how those using the bible to attack or bash others including the LGBTQ+ are not following Jesus that they are following Paul. He explains clearly how Jesus brought a new covenant for the people doing away with the old one in Leviticus. He explained how those using the bible to bash others and not feed & clothe the stranger/ immigrant are totally against what Jesus preached. He also mentioned how those trying to force the Old Testament of the bible in schools never want the words of Jesus hung in classrooms in public schools, they never want the sermon on the mount posted on the walls. Those kind of people only want authoritarian laws or do and dont do pushed on kids. Enjoy the video, I listen to him on The Daily Beans (news with swearing) friday newscast and his Sirius talk show. Hugs

The “Tip-up Warbler”

Palm Warbler

Setophaga palmarum

Also Known As

Wagtail Warbler
Tip-up Warbler
Bijirita común (Spanish)
Reinita coronicastaña (Spanish)

About

The Palm Warbler is unusual among the Western Hemisphere’s wood-warbler family. While the majority of warblers are sexually dimorphic, with males noticeably brighter in the breeding season, the male and female Palm Warbler are nearly identical, and can be impossible to tell apart. Warblers, in general, spend a majority of their time in trees and shrubs, but the Palm Warbler is quite comfortable on the ground. Rather than hopping like their arboreal relatives, these birds take to walking or running. Like other warblers, the Palm Warbler often joins mixed-species flocks outside of the breeding season. However, though most warblers tend to flock up with other arboreal species, the Palm Warbler is just as likely to be found foraging with sparrows along hedgerows and in open weedy fields.

Palm Warblers share another habit more typical of ground-dwelling birds in that they continuously bob their tails. This behavior is also seen in other birds typical of open habitats, including the Spotted Sandpiper and Black Phoebe, where the rate of bobbing is thought to vary with the bird’s level of excitement, and thus plays a role in communication. In many ways, the Palm Warbler behaves more like a sparrow or pipit than a typical wood-warbler — even its monotonous trilled song is remarkably similar to that of a Dark-eyed Junco or Chipping Sparrow. Though perhaps an oddball among its own family, this unique bird has found a niche all its own, somewhere between a sparrow and a warbler. (snip-MORE)

A Murder, Indeed!

As The Crow Poops

SCOTUS answers the caw of racism

Clay Jones

In a 6-3 decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district, ruling it an unconstitutional gerrymander. Immediately, Louisiana conservatives started redrawing the state’s congressional districts, without any of them being majority Black. Now, election maps from local school districts to state legislatures to Congress will be redrawn to undermine minority representation.

Louisiana is now planning to postpone the state’s May 16 primary, in which many people have already voted, so it can redraw the congressional maps. And just announced early this evening, Alabama and Tennessee will also be redrawing their congressional maps before the midterms. They won’t be the last.

Don’t be surprised if Republicans don’t create a red sweep of congressional districts across the South on Election Day.

The Voting Rights Act was created to prohibit discrimination in American voting and was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. The act ended things like literacy tests for minorities before they could be allowed to vote. It increased voter turnout among black Americans. According to the National Archives, around 250,000 new Black voters registered to vote by the end of 1965. Nine out of 13 Southern states had more than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote by the end of 1966. What the Supreme Court did on Wednesday was to encourage discrimination in American voting.

The conservative Supreme Court has been chipping away at the Voting Rights Act for years. The court issued a ruling in 2013 that killed federal oversight of voting rules in nine states, and led to over 1,000 closings of voting precincts, mostly in Black districts. Studies years later show that it increased the racial turnout gap, translating to hundreds of thousands of uncast ballots by voters of color in the 2022 election. Remember the 2013 ruling the next time you hear a MAGAt brag about Trump sweeping all of the swing states in 2024.

In 2021, the court ruled that fears of election fraud could justify new election rules without evidence that any fraud had occurred in the past, or that new rules created by Republicans in the aftermath of Donald Trump losing the 2020 election would make elections safer.

Now the court has ruled that the majority-minority congressional districts created with the intent of ensuring minority voters could elect candidates of their choice were unconstitutional. This will lead to states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, etc, having congressional delegations without any Black members.

Samuel Alito wrote the conservative court’s majority decision and said that the gerrymandered district that gave the state its second Black congressional representative was unconstitutional. The six conservatives say that this congressional district was discriminating.

The Civil Rights Act required Southern states with a history of voter discrimination to obtain federal approval before making changes to their voting laws. Now, that’s gone. Yeehaw states will now be free to discriminate in their elections without the burden of the federal government stopping them.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act outlaws any voting practice that creates hurdles to voters “on account of race or color.” Technically, that provision has not been eliminated, but as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, it leaves the provision “all but a dead letter.” She said the bar to show intentional discrimination is “an almost insurmountable barrier for challenges to any voting rights issues to prove discrimination.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the high court’s decision a “bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement, and said in a statement, “The Supreme Court has not just weakened a law, it has humiliated and dismantled the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and every man and woman who marched, bled, and died for Black Americans to have an equal voice at the ballot box.” It’s like the Roberts Court has just burned down the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said Wednesday’s ruling “means that you have entire communities that can go without having representation. It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that’s not exaggeration.”

Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office, said the court’s steady work to erode the Voting Rights Act, culminating in Wednesday’s decision, amounted to “burying it without the funeral.”

Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said the decision will allow more aggressive “cracking and packing” of populations to dilute their votes, “not just in congressional districts but also in state legislatures, county commissions, school boards, and city councils.”

Marc Morial, National Urban League president and CEO, said, “This decision is a continuation of a frontal assault on the gains of the Civil Rights Movement that began in 1954 with the Brown versus Board of Education decision.

Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project pointedout that a loss of representation, especially in state legislatures and Congress, will translate into minority communities losing a voice on issues that matter to them, such as healthcare, education and needed public works upgrades, and said, “States can now point to partisan objectives to justify maps that strip voters of color of representation, and federal courts will have little basis to intervene.”

Shalela Dowdy, an Alabama resident who was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that resulted in the creation of a new Alabama district in 2023, said, “Putting it in the hands of the states on this level is dangerous. There’s just been a history of the states not doing the right thing based off their state population.”

Stupid and racist, conservatives, like Gary McCoy and Margolis & Cox, love to claim that rules and laws that create black congressional districts, and the Civil Rights Act itself, are racist. But what they are doing is eliminating black representation while creating more for whites.

The Supreme Court has once again taken our nation backward. And again, this is the fault of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, who broke every rule and norm they could to pack the court with their troglodytes, even by stealing appointments from Democratic presidents. This court has actually taken away rights from Americans, like the guarantee of a woman’s right to choose.

And again, the court is doing everything it can to make it much more difficult to defeat Republicans.

Republicans love to claim that they’re the party that passed the Voting Rights Act. While not technically true, it could not have passed without Republican support. But now, the Republican Party is the one to kill the Voting Rights Act.

Donald Trump’s legacy will not be ballrooms, arches, his face on coins, passports, and his name on federal structures; it will be creating the court that killed democracy.

Crows: My Neighbourhood is full of crows. While you do find them in cornfields, they are also an urban bird. They also have the ability to mimic, like a parrot or a mynah. They are extremely intelligent. I like them. My friend and cartooning colleague Chris Britt creates paintings of crows. I texted him once to tell him that I just saw a murder outside my house. On some days, I have very large and loud murders. (snip-MORE)

Some Stuff To Read & Look At

Some entertaining; some, things about which to think. The first bit is somber; exceedingly somber. It is easy to just click through on the title to read the entire post; I subscribe for free, so I don’t want to just take the whole thing. Beneath, more stuff! Enjoy your May Day. 🌺

We Lost.

When the Supreme Court dealt the final blow to the Voting Rights Act, it completed its mission to erase the tangible results of the Civil Rights Movement.

Michael Harriot Apr 30, 2026

The dictum,”once a free man, always a free man,” though founded about as deeply in law, history and reason as, that “all men are born free and equal,” … [is] unimportant and ineffectual to protect the rights of citizens of slave States.

— Judge Hamilton Gamble

On March 22, 1852, America made a slave.

America’s race-based, constitutionally enforced system that legally extracted labor and intellectual property through violence or the threat of violence existed long before the 13 English colonies staged an insurrection against their British master. Colonial law made the condition intergenerational and perpetual. The founders wrote the fugitive slave clause to ensure that people who had already been reduced to human chattel couldn’t free themselves. But the Constitution didn’t make someone a slave. (snip-MORE, and so worth the click!)

And an antidote to that–click and fall in love!

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Good News From Colorado!

New Colorado Conversion Therapy Ban With Clever Mechanism Close To Passing

The bill uses a private right of action, a tactic previously used by Republicans to target abortion providers.

Erin Reed

On Monday, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee passed HB26-1322, a bill that creates a private civil right of action allowing survivors of conversion therapy to sue the practitioners who subjected them to it. The bill, which has no statute of limitations for such claims, would likely make the practice of conversion therapy financially prohibitive in the state. It comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision last month in Chiles v. Salazar, which found that Colorado’s 2019 ban on conversion therapy unconstitutional—effectively legalizing the discredited practice nationwide. The new bill has one final legislative hurdle to clear—the full Colorado Senate—before heading to Governor Jared Polis’s desk, though the governor has so far offered only lukewarm signals about whether he will sign it, saying he is “hopeful there is still time to construct a framework he could support.”

The bill targets what it calls “sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts”—defined as “any practice by a licensed mental health professional that seeks to direct a patient toward a predetermined sexual orientation or gender identity outcome, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of a particular sex or gender, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity the patient is directed toward.” The inclusion of “eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions” is notable—conversion therapists have long used this framework to argue disingenuously that they are not trying to change a person’s sexual orientation, merely helping them manage unwanted feelings. The bill explicitly carves out any counseling or therapy that “provides acceptance, support, and understanding of a patient” or “facilitates a patient’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development”—meaning therapists who support a patient’s own process of self-discovery, without steering them toward a predetermined outcome, would face no liability.

The bill uses a novel legal mechanism to target conversion therapy—a private right of action. Rather than the government banning conversion therapy outright, which is what the Supreme Court struck down in Chiles, the bill instead allows survivors to sue their practitioners directly, stating that “a person who suffered an injury as a result of sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts may bring a civil action for damages” against their conversion therapist. It also states that a lawsuit to recover damages can be commenced “at any time without limitation,” making its statute of limitations effectively endless. The mechanism may be insulated from the constitutional problem the Supreme Court identified in Chiles because the government is not restricting speech—instead, private citizens are seeking civil remedies for harm they suffered, the same way a patient can sue a doctor for malpractice. As Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, told Erin in the Morning after the Chiles ruling, “While the Supreme Court decision limits the abilities of states to regulate conversion therapy through professional standards, they did not limit the ability for states to protect LGBTQ youth from these abusive practices through tort or malpractice law.”

If the mechanism sounds familiar, it is because Republicans pioneered it to get around Supreme Court rulings they didn’t like—most famously in Texas’s SB 8, the 2021 abortion “bounty hunter” law. That law banned abortion after six weeks not through government enforcement but by allowing any private citizen to sue anyone who performed or aided an abortion for $10,000 in damages. The legal trick was simple: when abortion providers tried to challenge SB 8 in court, they couldn’t get an injunction because there was no government official to enjoin. Courts found that you can’t sue “the state” to block a law that only private citizens enforce. The Supreme Court effectively let SB 8 stand, and the strategy worked—abortion access in Texas collapsed virtually overnight even while Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. Kansas used the same model in SB 244, which allows anyone to sue a transgender person for using a restroom that doesn’t match their assigned sex at birth. Now, Colorado Democrats are exploiting the same constitutional loophole in the opposite direction—using private civil enforcement to deter a harmful practice that the Supreme Court says the government cannot directly ban.

It is important to note that some have raised concerns the bill could be weaponized against gender-affirming therapists—with anti-trans groups arguing that helping a trans youth transition constitutes its own form of “conversion therapy.” But the bill contains multiple layers of protection against such misuse. Its carveouts explicitly shield counseling that provides “acceptance, support, and understanding of a patient.” The bill also has protections in its causation standard. To establish that conversion therapy caused harm, a court must weigh “the nature, duration, and intensity” of the efforts, “the age and vulnerability of the plaintiff at the time,” “the relationship between the plaintiff and the mental health professional,” and “expert testimony regarding the general psychological effects of sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts.” It is unlikely that judges will consider anti-trans activists to be considered medical “experts” on this topic.

LGBTQ+ organizations, activists, and Democratic lawmakers in the state have supported the bill’s passage. “This decision only reinforces the urgent need for state-level protections,” said One Colorado, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “[HB 1322] provides a pathway for accountability, allowing survivors to seek justice against those who administer this harmful practice. We remain committed to ensuring that those responsible for such profound damage are held accountable.” Rep. Karen McCormick, a Democrat from Longmont, was blunt about the bill’s intent: “The purpose of this bill is seriously to send a chilling effect to any licensed professional therapist who may think about bringing that practice back.”

Conversion therapy is a discredited practice broadly decried by every major American medical organization. The APA concluded in a 2009 systematic review that the practice is “unlikely to be successful and involves risk of harm, including depression, suicidality, and anxiety,” and called for its total elimination. The United Nations has deemed conversion therapy a form of torture. A 2020 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that LGBTQ+ youth subjected to conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report attempting suicide. For transgender people specifically, conversion therapy often takes the form of so-called “gender exploratory therapy,” a rebranded approach that seeks to convince trans youth they are not actually transgender, keeping transition just out of reach by tricking trans youth that it might be offered if they jump through endless hoops while intending to deny it the entire way.

The bill now heads to the full Colorado Senate for a floor vote, where Democrats hold a 23-12 majority and passage is expected. Coloradans who support the bill can contact their state senator through the Colorado General Assembly’s legislator lookup tool. If the Senate passes the bill, it will go to Governor Polis, whose signature remains the final and most uncertain step. Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the United States, signed the original 2019 conversion therapy ban and has called the practice “a scam and a waste of people’s hard-earned money”—but his office has stopped short of committing to sign this bill, saying only that he is “hopeful there is still time to construct a framework he could support.” What changes, if any, the governor is seeking remain unclear. The bill includes a safety clause that would make it take effect on July 1, 2026, and would exempt it from voter referendum. If signed, Colorado would become the first state in the country to use a private right of action to combat conversion therapy in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling.