The parents of a transgender teen who died by suicide earlier this year are speaking out about the toll Idaho’s anti-trans laws and the Trump administration’s anti-trans crusade took on their daughter.
“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse Thorpe told NBC News in a recent profile. “It got inside.”
Thorpe and ex-husband Joseph Pollard describe their late daughter, May Pollard, as an energetic and curious child who loved sloths, video games, and writing poetry. She just wanted to live her life and experience the same things any teen does. But she was also keenly aware of the wave of anti-trans laws and sentiment that have swept Idaho and much of the U.S. in recent years.
According to NBC News, May, who had also been diagnosed with autism, came out as trans when she was in eighth grade. She began receiving gender-affirming medical care in ninth grade. But due to Idaho’s ban on such care for minors, passed in 2022 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024, her parents were forced to travel to Portland, Oregon, every six months to get May the care she needed. Following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Thorpe began making the 13-hour round trip by car to avoid creating a flight record amid the administration’s relentless crackdown on gender-affirming care for young people.
While the treatment improved things for May, the obstacles placed between her and the care she needed by anti-trans legislators continued to weigh on her.
Then, in July 2023, Idaho’s law banning trans students from accessing single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity took effect. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of Boise High School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, and in July 2025, May joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe. In court filings, May described feeling stigmatized by being forced to use her campus’s two single-occupancy restrooms, which came to be referred to as the “trans bathrooms.”
“It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender,” she said. “I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly. For me, it is not a part of myself I talk about or that I feel is the most important part of my identity.”
Her parents told NBC News that May would avoid eating and drinking during the school day, hoping to not have to use the school’s bathrooms. “I just want to fit in,” she wrote in her affidavit in the Lambda Legal case. “It is upsetting to think that I may have to go through the rest of high school without access to something as basic as the ability to use the same restroom as everyone else.”
May’s parents say she became more troubled last fall and winter, according to NBC News. She attempted to run away to Oregon, and at least one of her poems seemed to reference self-harm. Then on the morning of January 27, Thorpe woke to find May missing from her bedroom. She later found her daughter’s body in a downstairs bedroom. May was just 16 years old.
When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.
“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”
As NBC News notes, over the last few years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) has signed 15 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In April, Little signed a pair of bills, one of which made it a criminal offense for trans people to use the bathroom associated with their gender, while the other banned Pride flags on government buildings.
As for Lambda Legal’s challenge to the state’s school bathroom ban, at the time of May’s death, she was one of just two plaintiffs left in the case, as all the others had graduated high school and no longer held standing. Earlier this spring, Lambda Legal moved to dismiss the case after the final plaintiff graduated.
But Thorpe has continued to protest Idaho’s anti-trans laws. According to NBC News, she stood outside Gov. Little’s office during a March 31 protest holding a photo of her daughter.
“I wanted to support the protesters and remind everyone, including the governor,” Thorpe told the outlet, “that the stakes are real.”
“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” she said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”
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For those who think it is just the government of Israel that is pro-genocide of the Palestinians. In fact due to media and training in jewish schools the drum has long been pushing that Palestinians are evil sub humans. Sound familiar? It is what happened to the very people now doing it to others. Seems they learned the wrong lessons from Germany in the 1930s to 1945. The public is mostly fully OK with what the government is doing and the media has pushed it hard like our own billionaire bought media is trying to do. The media is hiding the truth and wants to push a narrative that supports / makes Israel the poor agreevied party when they are in fact the ones pushing the hostility and threats onto others. Israel retuniely killed journalists and banned all others from entering Gaza and the West Bank trying to keep video of the crimes being committed by the Jewish public and Israeli government from being seen by the world. They know what they are doing is wrong and if people knew the truth they would force their government to stop Israel.
Israel doesn’t want coexistence with others; it wants to rule over them. They want to take land they claim a 2,500 year old document gives to them that the rest of the world doesn’t recognize as the borderlines. Here is the public supported by the majority of the government, saying no Arabs in Gaza anymore. While the IDF destroyed water for the Gazans, they passed it out to the illegal settlers. If Palitisinans were doing this on their side of the fence the IDF would shoot them no questions asked. The MR crew is doing an impressive job laying out the difference in rules and privileges for the Palestinians and the settlers. As Matt says, Israel is now South Africa apartheid on steroids. Hugs
An update on my procedure to shave the spinal cord in my lower spine. The people at the surgical center were grand. I can’t describe them any other way. One nurse even joked with Ron and me that she would love to spend time with us off work hours because she loved our sexual innuendo banter with each other, stuff like we can’t even think straight after 36 years together and that we don’t say move straight forward we say move gayly forward. But work required her to only join us around the fringes but we had her laughing so hard. All of the staff were wornder and one even walked me to the bathroom when I felt I needed to pee. It was relatively embarrassing, but as I had worked in ICUs before I realized it was totally every day normal for the nurses to see my butt. She did hang the IVs and give me privacy which was more than we were able to do for the ICU patients.
When they took me into the procedure room, I was worried that I might not be out enough and would feel pain. The anesthesiologist asked me if I had ever had a colonoscopy. I repiled yes. He said do you remember it? No I replied. Same here he said, once we get you positioned, you won’t remember anything. They got me positioned, and then he told me that once they got me an arm rest for my right hand he would administer the aniestha. I was gone even before the arm rest was set up. Totally out. Woke up in the recovery room, and once I was awake they went and got Ron.
I have a list of do and don’ts. But on the way home we stopped to eat, I had a large breakfast for me. Then we got home, and I went to bed until 12:30. Got up, ate again, and locked the Majority Report into the fun half so I can watch it free, and went back to bed. Then I slept until nearly 5 PM. Got up and started working on the cartoon / meme / news post that was to go out today. I will go out tomorrow. Sorry about that, the spirit is willing, but the body is very weak right now. On the plus side the pain in my right leg I have been living with seems to have diminished greatly and in some cases gone away.
The video below is very funny and points out how tRump is now just a befuddled grandpa who thinks everything must be about him and how he is the greatest even when he is clueless about what he is talking about. The host points out the mistakes and money interests of the entire cabinet. Hope you enjoy. Hugs
OK this won’t be a full post on my abuse because Ron is terrified of my being emotionally upset before my surgery tomorrow. This female sibling was pregnant at 13 and married at 14. But while she was in the house she was the defacto caregiver to me. She was the one who tied me to a stair banister and let her boyfriends and other boys rape me. Her soon to be husband wanted more so she arranged for him to force me to give him blow jobs and rape me in other places / context. He had a fascination with buttholes so you can guess what that meant for the 3, and 4 and 5 and 6 year old me.
She was the one who farmed me out to the guy across the street at age 3 who was a real little boy lover so while he used my body he never made me hurt like I was being hurt at home. He often got upset at my bruised body. He often gave me the only real affection I felt at that time. I just had to let him use my body to gain it.
She tried to get me removed from the will due to the fact I was adopted. In her own writings she said I was never a part of the family so shouldn’t have a share of the inheritance. She failed to mention how badly I was treated by the family for some reason. The courts disagreed with her. Her husband was the executor of the estate and he was informed and needed to be ordered by the court to change the legal paperwork to reflect my new legal name, but in her obituary she used the family name of my abusers. She knew better at this point, as did her husband who once was said to be a corrupt cop.
I am going to try to keep my mind from it. But what Ron doesn’t know is my mind went there last night. Just not bad enough for me to yell / scream out. I will have to deal with it soon. But not hopefully tonight the night before my spine surgery. Hugs
I watched this the day it aired on the show. My gods how horrific and horrifying. The out of control settlers try to kill these people because they are recording the stealing of Palestinian lands and murdering Palestinians. If the driver had been any slower these people in the cars would have been killed. And the IDF supported the attacks on helpless people. US citizens. The Israeli government takes our taxpayer money and supports the killing of US citizens and reporters. If there is anything that says the Israelis know they are committing war crimes it is the killing of the reporters for showing their crimes. The place these attacks took place is in a zone that no Israeli is supposed to be even allowed in. Israeli is out of control and they use our taxpayer money to do it. The reason the reporter wanted to go to that spot was because a palestinian man’s son was killed and those with him hunted for 2 hours by settlers. The settlers live in the homes that the Palestinians built for themselves. Israeli settlers are nothing more than thieving thugs, and the population of Israel supports them which makes all those in Israel supporting this nothing more than thieving thugs. The people in these cars were terrified. You can hear it in the cries of the people in the car. The US ambassador supports Israel in this killing of US people. Please watch and do what you can to stop these lawless attacks against innocent people by Israeli settlers. Hugs
I recently had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation with my Dad. At 88-years old, he is understandably considering what comes next, and knowing that I’m a ‘blowhard democrat and therefore think I know everything‘, lol, he made it part of my own considerations – at least out loud. But, as we talked, I began to realize that how we look at “what comes next” truly inspires how we view this thing called life, what we value and hold dear.
When I was much younger, I had the opportunity to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I think I’d like to read it again. It was a story that had a great impact on a young troubled life, and while I am sure I didn’t get nearly as much from the book as was offered, I still carry some of that book within my thoughts nearly 35 years later. Chief among those ringing ideas was the consideration that we are on this world to be excellent, to fly free and powerfully, to be our best selves. It is an idea that gives me hope and conviction on the same blade, for I’ve not made much of myself. What I have done, perhaps better late than never, is I’ve begun to understand what is important to me and I’ve tried to adjust my life accordingly.
During my studies of different religions, I found a great deal of beauty. It is probably shocking to some, but Muslims have a beautiful religion filled with dedication to their God, peace and humility. I recently heard a person of influence, a politician, say publicly that he “hated the Muslim religion”. I thought that was tragic. He has painted a billion people with a the same brush and feels fully justified in his self-righteous hate. His words did not influence me to hate Muslims, they only brought me sadness. Here is a man who hopes to profit by hate, and I can only imagine what those wages bring.
Over the years, I’ve come to find a lot of hope in the Christian Faith, but I don’t find myself deluded into thinking that the Bible is definitive or that the Pulpit is infallible. Clearly humans have left their mark on both, and both have gained their insecurities and foibles. Unfortunately, most religions are marked by the greedy and deluded powerful who are sure that they know what is best for everyone and damned be those who disagree. As a result, parishioners lose their search for what is beautiful and magnificent in whatever may come next. They instead follow a set of rules, a kind of club, a group identity. They have given up on God and hope only to please the pastor and Sister Bertha Betterthanyou. They have forsaken courage to seek for the safety of the flock.
Perhaps this is just what we are. How many of us are caught in this idea that by hating someone else, we are somehow doing as God would want? I would be very curious to ask them what they value, and then would I be so brave to ask how their spoken values reflect their current words. Do they value freedom, or just their own freedom? Do they value love, or only for those like them? Do they value hope, but do performative acts some man told them would get them into Heaven? Do they seek or are they comfortable in being told what to think, what to feel, what to do? Do they look for what comes next or are they seeking identity and safety in a church, a political movement, in the acceptance of someone seeking to control them?
I don’t know what I would tell Dad if he asked me again. I don’t think the answer is in religion, any religion. I do think there is something that comes next, what I would loosely if respectfully refer to as God, and if I could quote Ghandi I’d say that God is not restricted by any single religion. I want to believe that this beautiful thing called life doesn’t end. I want to believe in Love. I want to rest in Hope. I want to live a life absolutely riddled with awe at how fabulous humanity can be, rather than live a life of judgement and insecurity. And, when I regard my final days I hope I am looking forward with eager anticipation for all the wonders I will experience.
Kegseth is hyper fixated on the the male physique and the idea of a white male hyper agressive toxic masculinity that he thinks the Russian military has. But while our inclusive military is considered one of the best Russia’s hyper all white military is getting its ass handed to it by the inclusive diverse Ukrainian military. I posted earlier that Kegseth has again blocked the promotion of well qualified female and black officers to two star rank in his goal of an all white male military. This guy won’t be in charge of the military in two more years if the people are allowed to to have a free election and his successor hopefully won’t be such a misogynist bigot. But the damage will be done and the careers of these officers damaged. Kegseth couldn’t take serving a full career of at least 20 years, but these people who he is denying promotion to have well more than 20 years in the military. How come testosterone for trans kids / people is somehow in Kegseth’s view bad and trans people taking hormones are unfit for military service, yet having straight white men all on testosterone some how makes the military better? Hugs
Service members 30 and over will test annually and can choose to receive testosterone replacement therapy if they are recommended for treatment.
“We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world, and this program delivers on that obligation,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo
The Pentagon will begin annually testing service members 30 and over for testosterone deficiencies, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday.
Hegseth said in a video posted to social media that the new screening would become part of the Defense Department’s periodic health assessment for military personnel. The health exam has been mandatory since 2016 and is used to measure medical condition, behavioral health, mental health and readiness to deploy.
Service members who are recommended for treatment will have the choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy, Hegseth said. Personnel under 30 can volunteer for an examination.
Hegseth’s post referred to “High-T,” a social media fad pushed by influencers that encourages men to seek higher levels of testosterone to maintain their strength and masculinity. Discussions around masculinity have seeped into culture wars and national politics. In May, James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, defended his masculinity after personal attacks from conservatives about his physical appearance.
“This initiative — it’s not about artificial enhancement; it’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” Hegseth said in the video. “We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world, and this program delivers on that obligation.”
Testosterone levels in males decline about 1% a year after the age of 30 or 40, according to the Mayo Clinic. It is considered a typical sign of aging.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not approve testosterone replacement therapy for males without specific forms of hypogonadism, a medical condition associated with a malfunction of the organs that produce testosterone. Testosterone replacement therapy consists of injections, pellets, patches or gels that release hormones into the body.
Some medical groups, such as the Endocrine Society and the American Urological Association “recommend against routine screening” for hypogonadism in the general male population, according to Helen Bernie, a urologist and director of male sexual and reproductive medicine at Indiana University.
Bernie said testing could still be valuable in some military populations with symptoms or certain risk factors, but warned that a single low testosterone result should not lead directly to a diagnosis or treatment. Instead, testosterone levels should be measured twice in the early morning and considered alongside symptoms and possible underlying causes.
“Screening should open the door to a thoughtful medical evaluation, not automatically to a prescription,” Bernie told NOTUS.
Sleep deprivation, intense physical training, weight changes, illness and certain medications can temporarily lower testosterone, Bernie said. Doctors should evaluate those factors before determining that a service member has a testosterone deficiency.
Bernie said testosterone therapy is generally safe for appropriately selected and monitored patients, but it can “impair their sperm production or impair their fertility,” especially in young men.
She said service members should be counseled about fertility and other risks before beginning therapy and monitored throughout treatment.
“If the Pentagon moves forward with a screening program, I do think it’s important that there’s clear evidence-based guidelines in place so that every service member is evaluated consistently and safely.”
“The goal should be appropriate diagnosis, appropriate treatment, not simply increasing the number of men receiving testosterone,” she said.
The Defense Department declined to comment further on Hegseth’s video. It did not answer questions regarding the FDA’s guidance on testosterone replacement therapy.
The FDAdid not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Billionaire TERF influencer J.K. Rowling has announced that she will cover the legal costs of anti-trans groups named in a report by Amnesty International (UK), which called them “anti-rights.”
The report was retracted shortly after publication and replaced with a statement from the organization saying the report was uploaded “without going through the established internal review processes” and that its “language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed.”
But the withdrawal and public acknowledgement was not enough to sate the organizations that have fought tooth and nail to exclude and/or antagonize the transgender community in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is notoriously more perilous for free speech than the United States. For our neighbors across the pond, the burden of proof lies with the defendant to prove the statement is true; here in the United States, the burden of proof lies with the aggrieved to prove that a statement is categorically false, and published knowingly or at least recklessly regardless. The US also benefits from “anti-SLAPP” laws to prevent such frivolous lawsuits waged by wealthy individuals or powerful corporations against those who criticize them.
So Rowling capitalized on the spectacle to, in essence, help dozens of groups in what appears to be an attempt to sue Amnesty into oblivion.
CAPTION: Screenshot from Rowling’s Twitter, where she offers “women’s organizations” backing to sue Amnesty International (UK) through her own charitable fund. She quote tweets a group of people who self-identify as “trans widows”—referring to cisgender people whose spouses or ex-spouses came out as transgender.
The saga began earlier this month, when Amnesty International (UK) released a report titled “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK.” It released a similar report last year, but this year, it added a new category for what appears to be the anti-rights movement’s most rapidly growing sector: “Gender critical” groups, or groups that are antithetical to transgender rights and inclusion.
Rowling rushed to tweet about the situation.
CAPTION: Rowling tweets a group’s response to Amnesty International (UK)’s report on “anti-rights” groups.
She lauded “LGB” groups—another anti-trans buzzword, which, as the name suggests, describes groups that wish to erase transgender people from the queer liberation movement—like the Gay Men’s Network, an organization that has pushed for anti-trans policies. That group posted a public letter indicating it might sue Amnesty International for defamation. The Network demanded a retraction of the report and then claimed that Amnesty is guilty of “trying to control gay and lesbian free speech.”
In the day or so that followed, Rowling retweeted around a dozen similar letters. The posted letters include groups like Genspect, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that threatened Amnesty International with legal action, as well as groups like LGB Alliance and Sex Matters.
Amnesty International (UK) did not formally reply to a request for comment for this piece.
Gender critical activists, often financed by Rowling, rely on legal “guerilla warfare” said one U.K.-based trans rights organizer, who could only speak to Erin in the Morning if granted anonymity. The tactic is familiar: Wear down non-profits and individuals who dare speak out against anti-trans and anti-rights groups. They don’t have to win a lawsuit; they can just file again, and again, and again, draining valuable time and resources.
“They have sued organizations into the ground,” the advocate said.
Some context for just a handful of these groups so up in arms about being labeled as hateful: Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy for Sex Matters, gave a speech at a Genspect conference (both are groups on the anti-rights list) about how “beauty” is “inimical to trans bullshit.
She also boasted about manufacturing a moral and medical panic about how, although only a “small” segment of trans kids are prescribed puberty blockers, it has been a strategic “rhetorical device” to erode the rights of transgender people more broadly.
Depending on who you ask, TERFs are considered either a self-branded liberal faction of gender critical ideology, or a different term for what is essentially the same movement. TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” a term to describe self-proclaimed “feminists” who oppose giving transgender women and cisgender women equal rights.
Many of these TERF or “gender critical” groups have close ties to far-right Christian groups. DonorsTrust, the conservative donor behemoth and primary financier of initiatives like Project 2025, also forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine and Thoughtful Therapists, both of whom made the “anti-rights” list because, as Amnesty International (UK) among many others have put it, they promote “conversion practices.”
One major point of contention was the inclusion of Rowling’s own organization, Beira’s Place. It does not primarily seem to function as any sort of advocacy organization. Rather, it’s a women’s shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, but it also has an explicit anti-trans policy, banning transgender women from accessing its services.
However, as the report explained, none of these groups exist in a vacuum. “These entities must be understood as an ecosystem sharing values, goals, strategy and tactics and, for some of them, formal collaboration,” it reads.
Amnesty isn’t the first or last institution or expert to call out gender critical ideology for being anti-rights. UN Women has published materials saying as much.
Meanwhile, University of Sheffield sociologist Dr. Sally Hines has called this framework “deeply conservative.” In the Journal for Gender Studies, she writes that “despite its origins within a branch of radical feminism, [gender-critical ideology] has a profoundly misogynist agenda that stands opposed to the rights of women.” It is a “key force within a current conservative pushback against the rights of women and minoritized sexual groups.”
Gender critical activists continue to use the language of oppression to characterize their plight. Many say “TERF” is a slur. Others believe criticizing a group because of its arguably regressive politics is grounds for a lawsuit.
Despite the fact that the report was pulled down, Erin in the Morning was able to retrieve a copy reposted by an anti-trans news outlet. You can read a full version of that archived version below.
Report A Growing Threat The Anti Rights Movement In The Uk July 2026
John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT
Scottie's Playtime 
