This broadcast has important information on the trans issue being pushed by bigots in women’s sports. They discuss how this really is an attack on the rights of all women making them inferior to men in our society. It is part of project 2025 to lower the rights of women using trans people. Hugs
Category: Science / Medical Information
NJ Gov Mikie Sherrill signs expansive bill to fight back in war on trans & reproductive health care
Greg OwenAugust 21, 2026, 3:00 pm EDTNew Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) on Thursday signed a robust defense of transgender rights and women’s bodily autonomy, shielding individuals from out-of-state investigations over medical care associated with gender identity and abortion.“If Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis tries to investigate someone who came to New Jersey to access care, we will protect anyone seeking care that is legal here in New Jersey from investigations in other states,” Sherrill said at a signing ceremony reported by the New Jersey Monitor.
The jab at the Republican governors of Texas and Florida comes after both have sought the medical records of residents or organizations seeking or providing abortions and gender-affirming care in their own states and others in pursuit of prosecuting them.
The expansive bill passed the New Jersey Assembly and Senate in June in party-line votes. It takes effect immediately.
Addressing both abortion and gender-affirming care in the same bill is the rare instance where Democrats have used transgender rights to their political advantage, building a broader indictment against the Trump administration and its enablers.
“This isn’t just about abortion. Republicans in Washington are trying to control people’s lives. That’s why the White House has relentlessly attacked our transgender community as well,” Sherrill said. “They’ve pulled tactics straight out of the Red Scare playbook to restrict transgender people’s healthcare.”
As well as protecting patients from out-of-state investigations, the law creates a new criminal charge for individuals in New Jersey who block access or intentionally intimidate those seeking gender-affirming or reproductive healthcare at facilities that provide it.
Patients and providers may also sue those who do so for damages, attorney fees, and other relief, a tactic employed by red state legislatures targeting transgender people using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
New Jersey is “a beacon of hope for everyone who understands democracy,” said state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D), a chief sponsor of the bill and the Senate’s majority leader. “You can’t tell us what we can read on a library shelf but want to be up in our uterus in an exam room,” she said.
The bill’s signing comes as the Trump administration scored a win this week in its effort to subpoena the records of a Washington State-based telehealth clinic that provides gender-affirming care. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Department of Justice administrative subpoena seeking the personal and confidential health records of trans youth who have used the service.
The department has issued at least 20 subpoenas to gender-affirming care providers in its anti-trans intimidation campaign. Challenges to the subpoenas have overwhelmingly prevailed, with judges labeling the efforts a “fishing expedition” intended to “harass” and “intimidate,” and to end gender-affirming care through “fear.”
Simone Kraus, a transgender woman from Sussex County, called the new law in New Jersey “a profound milestone.”
“As a trans woman who has walked this path, who knows the deeply personal and necessary journey of receiving gender-confirmation surgery, this hits home in a way policies and legal briefs rarely can capture,” she said. “New Jersey is making it clear today that what happens in a doctor’s office is strictly between the patients and the doctors. Politicians do not have a say.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Political news I want to share. 8-19-2026.
‘Graveyard for Grants’: NIH Is Holding Up Medical Research Funding
https://www.notus.org/health-science/nih-holding-up-medical-research-funding-status-19
Hundreds of grants, including for maternal health, contraceptives and drug abuse, are in limbo, subject to political reviews.
The Trump administration is implementing more political oversight of grants. Alex Brandon/AP
It used to be that once a National Institutes of Health grant award hit “status 19,” the money was about to go out the door.
That’s not the case anymore. The Trump administration has enacted an unprecedented political review process, pushing hundreds of awards into limbo. Status 19 — an administrative code describing awards with senior leadership sign-off — is being used as the holding cell.
Current and former career staff say this extra review by senior leaders is occurring after grants have undergone peer review, been approved by multiple offices in NIH, and screened for red-flag words around race, gender or other behavioral and social sciences. The extra political reviews are required not only for newly funded grants but also for annual payment installments for previously awarded projects.
As a result, some grants are lingering in status 19 for weeks or even months, gumming up the works as grant officers try to get awards out the door ahead of the new fiscal year starting in October. Flagged grants reviewed by NOTUS had to do with maternal health, contraceptive use, aging, dementia and opioid abuse.
“The notion that Francis Collins or Mike Lauer would ever have reviewed individual grants like this is so beyond the realm of comprehension,” a senior career staffer said, referring to the former directors of NIH and its Office of Extramural Research. “It’s laughable to me.”
A second senior NIH official called status 19 a “graveyard for grants.” The NIH staffers were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
As one of the largest grant funders in the federal government, NIH’s process is a prime example of how the Trump administration is implementing more political oversight of grants across a wide swath of agencies, even as its efforts to formalize those reviews face pushback.
Senate Republicans voted to temporarily block a White House regulation to formalize political review, which has already led to delays in posting and awarding grants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Department of Interior and other agencies.
Researchers, patient advocates and biotech companies are outraged by the proposed regulation, which the White House is seeking to implement by Oct. 1 but could be blocked until December if the House also approves a delay.
Senior NIH leaders sent around a new agency review flowchart in May outlining additional steps once an award hits status 19. The flowchart, viewed by NOTUS, mandates a review by the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) and an HHS counselor before grantees are given a notice of award. There are no political appointees at OER, but its director reports to NIH Director and Trump appointee Jay Bhattacharya.
As a result of the extra reviews, the number of grants sitting for weeks in status 19 have surged. Around 8% of new grant awards are sitting in status 19 for anywhere from two to seven weeks, according to internal data shared with NOTUS.
In past years, around 11% of first-time awards had been released to the recipients within a week. This year, it’s 2%.
The delays are even more pronounced for annual payment installments for ongoing grants. The vast majority previously left status 19 within three days; now it takes 53 days to get 90% of payments out the door.
Lauer, who served as NIH’s extramural research director from 2015 to February 2025, said he couldn’t recall a time when a political appointee — including the NIH director — halted awarding of a research grant after it had gone through the review and approval process.
“Status 19 was not something I thought about,” Lauer told NOTUS.
NIH career staff stress that by the time grant awards reach status 19, they have been through dozens of editing and review steps. They’ve undergone peer review and a second look by an advisory council. Grant officers have gone through a checklist, including confirming that women and racial minorities have been appropriately included, something required by statute.
In grants reviewed by NOTUS, HHS or EOR staff flagged words including “diverse,” “equity,” “structural” and “underrepresented” and asked for clarification about what the researchers meant by them. In one project, a staffer wrote that the word “structural” could include concepts that are inconsistent with NIH priorities.
They asked for more clarification in projects that focused on health disparities or racial groups. Officials wrote that focusing on specific racial groups required more justification. In one project that expressed support for scholars and researchers from a variety of backgrounds, an official responded that the language could raise legal concerns if interpreted as targeting people based on demographics.
In multiple flagged grants, officials expressed concerns that they weren’t worth funding because their only practical use might be to support the writing of new laws.
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard disputed the notion that status 19 is being used to hold up grants under extra political reviews. She said grants can remain in status 19 for five to 10 days while they are given final review by the Office of Extramural Research.
“There is no political appointee review stage in the NIH grant review process,” Hilliard said in a statement. “OER’s review is a longstanding part of NIH’s grant review process.”
Lauer said releasing grant money might face occasional delays, but it was almost always because Congress had failed to pass a budget for NIH, leading to uncertainty about how much total grant funding would be available.
Trump appointees are also conducting extra layers of review to the notices posted by the government to let researchers know money is available for specific projects or programs. Researchers say they’ve seen more delays in posting those notices — another obstacle in getting grant funding out the door.
“It’s this black box of HHS review,” said Colleen Kelley, an associate dean for research at Emory University.
Author
Political news and stuff I want to share. 8-12-2026
News I want to share. 8-11-2026 part 1
FAUCI EXPOSED! | Armageddon Update
The UK’s new plan for trans students: bathroom bans, forced outing, & no social transitions
More hate and bigotry enacted against all the medical safety data available. Guess I am just not being understanding today because these laws are not only not needed but also very harmful. They cause a lot more problems than the pretended harm they claim to solve. It is the attempt to regulate and restrict sexual / gender standards into the laws. It just causes kids and people problems for no reason and promotes anger / bigotry against a small minority of people. Hugs
Faefyx Collington (They/Them)July 19, 2026, 11:00 am EDTThe United Kingdom’s Department of Education has published its updated guidance for “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” (KCSIE) and it will take effect on September 1. However, the guidance is likely to put trans and gender-non-conforming children at greater risk.
“We criticise numerous aspects of the guidance, especially as to how schools should approach requests related to ‘social transition,’” The Good Law Project wrote in a statement responding to the draft guidance earlier this year. “We also emphasise its failure to properly explain how schools should accommodate the needs of trans pupils in accessing various aspects of school life, such as toilets, changing facilities, and sports.”
Last year, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, the legal definition of “woman” is based on “biological sex.” In the aftermath, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released temporary guidance on barring trans people from single-sex spaces. They’ve now released their finalized plan, which says that businesses and institutions should prevent trans people using a single-sex spaces, and that if they allow trans people to use them, they will no longer be considered single-sex spaces.
The aggressive new schools guidance set out in KCSIE is set to comply with the EHRC’s updated policies around single-sex spaces, ruling that trans and gender-questioning children cannot use spaces aligned with their gender identity, even if they have socially transitioned.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Email Email EmailFrequency
- Daily Brief
- Week in Review
- Week in Good News
———————————————————————————————————————–“Schools must not allow children into toilets designated for the opposite biological sex,” the guidance reads. “This includes where schools are responding to a request to support any degree of social transition for children who are questioning their gender.”
The same policy is applied to changing rooms for those over 11 years old, nor should the students “share overnight accommodation with a child of the opposite biological sex,” it states.
The guidance allows for single-use restrooms “if a gender-questioning child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex.” However, there is no actual requirement for this, but only the suggestion that “schools and colleges should consider whether they can provide an alternative toilet facility—for example self-contained individual toilets—without compromising the provision of single-sex facilities.”
When it comes to all of these arrangements, the guidance clearly states, “These alternative arrangements should not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of any other children.”
However, such arrangements in their own right will challenge the safety and dignity of trans children. One plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s bathroom bill died by suicide earlier this year. Before her death she said of similar provisions, “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.”
When it comes to social transition at school, the guidance advises against staff and teachers supporting it, citing concerns raised in the controversial Cass Review. The guidance sets out extensive hurdles before any member of staff at a school or colleges can be supportive of a social transition.
The guidance establishes that “parents and carers should be actively involved and their views treated with importance.” That rule alone amounts to a forced outing policy that could put trans children at risk of harm if their family are not supportive. While the guidance goes on to carve out an exception for “rare circumstances” where involving parents and carers could pose a “greater risk,” such a policy would require a lot of trust and a careful hand from school administrators who are inexperienced with such matters.
The possibility of the school deciding not to allow the social transition is not only laid out but encouraged. The guidance notes that “when considering a child’s request for support with social transition will be to consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes.” They also note that, for younger children, support for a social transition should be “agreed very rarely.”
More of the choice is taken away from trans children and their families with the note that for “pre-pubertal children” clinical involvement should be part of the decision-making process and that “should include advising on the risks and benefits of social transition as a planned intervention, referencing best available evidence. This is not a role that can be undertaken by staff without appropriate clinical training.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
U.K. government covered up dramatic spike in trans youth suicides, new report says
This is what all the medical data and medical science shows which is why laws were passed to promote transgender acceptance. Then some people decided it was an insult to their god, some decided that they needed everyone to be the same as they are in life, and politicians realized it was a way to distract and get people to vote for them. There is no medical reason, no safety reason, and no social reason for hate towards trans people and other LGBTQ+. To be so dismissive of the needs of other people who cause you no harm is crazy and I do not understand the motivation of the bigots. Hugs
John Russell (He/Him)February 12, 2026, 3:30 pm EST· Updated on February 13, 2026The U.K. government appears to have covered up a dramatic rise in transgender youth suicides, according to data obtained by U.K.-based government accountability non-profit the Good Law Project.
As Erin in the Morning reports, data the non-profit obtained from the National Health Service (NHS)-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) via a Freedom of Information request sharply contrasts with the government’s official report on trans youth suicides in the wake of the 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling.
As the Good Law Project notes, following the U.K. High Court of Justice’s initial ruling in Tavistock, which found that minors under 16 could not legally consent to receive puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, the National Health Service (NHS) substantially limited access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those limits reportedly remained in place even after the Tavistock ruling was overturned in 2021.
The U.K. government commissioned its 2024 Appleby Report after the Good Law Project reported that two whistleblowers with the Tavistock gender clinic alerted the organization to a significant rise in suicides among young people on the NHS’s waitlist for appointments to begin gender-affirming care in the wake of the Tavistock case.
————————————————————————————————————————
Insights for the LGBTQ+ community
Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Frequency Email *Frequency
- Daily Brief
- Week in Review
- Week in Good News
——————————————————————————————————————–According to Good Law Project, the Appleby Report identified only 12 suicide deaths among current or former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) patients at the Tavistock clinic between 2018 and 2024. However, as Erin in the Morning notes, the report disregarded young people who were unable to access GIDS care due to long wait times, which, post-Tavistock, now last an average 25 years.
At the same time, Good Law Project submitted a Freedom of Information request with the NCMD, and has only just published the data it received.
“Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021–2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years,” the organization wrote in a February 7 release. “This spike follows the decision by NHS England to pull down the shutters on gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people” following the Tavistock case.
In total, the NCMD data show 46 transgender children in the U.K. died by suicide between 2019 and 2025. In addition to the nine accounted for between 2019–2021 and the alarming spike to 22 between 2021–2022, the data also show 10 suicide deaths between 2022–2023. And, according to Good Law Project, NCMD added that “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed.”
Good Law Project said it was “appalled” that U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting “commissioned and published a report to reassure the public that there was no significant rise in suicide rates, when 22 children took their own lives in a single year: 2021-22.” The Appleby report, they said, “denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.”
The nonprofit claims that Streeting department “fought tooth and nail” to block its freedom of information requests.
“To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as ‘dangerous’ while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness,” the group said.
Trans journalist Erin Reed said of these findings, “More alarming is what appears to be an explicit attempt to cover up trans youth suicide deaths. Those who seek to restrict gender-affirming care also seek to restrict any information showing those restrictions may lead to harm. Among the far right, claims have emerged that transgender youth are in no danger of suicide from the withdrawal of gender-affirming care, but this could not be further from the truth.”
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Judge questions difference between Hegseth’s testosterone policy and transgender care for troops
Updated 6:09 PM EDT, July 22, 2026Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new initiative to test and treat troops for low testosterone has prompted a federal judge to question the differences between that kind of testosterone replacement therapy and hormone treatment for transgender men in the military.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington raised the question Wednesday in an ongoing lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops. Reyes noted that Trump’s ban says “the Armed Forces must adhere to high mental and physical health standards … without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions.”
Reyes ordered both parties in the lawsuit to address “the similarities and differences in administering TRT, both medically and logistically, for trans men compared to other service members, including cis individuals.” She was using the acronym for testosterone replacement therapy.
The judge also requested information on the Pentagon’s “basis for treating trans men and other service members differently between this new policy and the Military Ban.”
Reyes’ order comes a week after Hegseth announced that he is rolling out a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among troops, calling it necessary to allow them to operate at their “absolute best.”
The screenings will be conducted annually as part of service members’ required medical screenings for those 30 and older, he said. Troops under 30 can volunteer to be tested. In a video on social media, Hegseth said receiving testosterone replacement therapy would be voluntary.
Other Trump administration officials have begun to advocate for men to have easier access to testosterone replacement therapies, but the messaging from Hegseth and others blends known science on the hormone with broader, and less substantiated, claims.
Testosterone levels in men decline naturally with age and have long been linked to issues like erectile dysfunction, low libido, mood changes and weight gain. But experts have debated for years how to diagnose those problems and whether they should be treated by replacing the hormone.
Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is overseeing one of the lawsuits against Trump’s ban on transgender troops. Transgender active duty service members and former service members seeking to reenlist sued in late January 2025, shortly after the president returned for his second term in office.
Reyes ruled last year against Trump’s executive order to exclude transgender troops. A divided panel of federal appeals court judges sent the case back to Reyes after partially upholding her order, finding that the ban was unlawful and service members who sued could not be kicked out.
Reyes has since given the case class-action status, which means the outcome could expand to all service members.
Trump’s transgender military ban remains in effect, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Pentagon to enforce it as litigation plays out.
___
Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.
