Tag: Anti-Trans Laws

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

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/u-k-government-covered-up-dramatic-spike-in-trans-youth-suicides-new-report-says/

Good Law Project claims U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting’s department fought to block freedom of information requests for data on trans youth suicides.

Photo of the author

John Russell (He/Him)February 12, 2026, 3:30 pm EST· Updated on February 13, 2026
transgender, teen, texas, texans, suicide

The 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.

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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.

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John Russell is a writer and editor based in New York City. In addition to covering politics and entertainment for LGBTQ Nation, he has written for Vanity Fair, Slate, People, Billboard, and Out. He also writes about film, TV, and pop culture in his free newsletter Johnny Writes…

 

Parents speak out after their teen died by suicide: Idaho’s anti-trans extremism took a toll

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/parents-speak-out-after-their-teen-died-by-idahos-anti-trans-took-a-toll/

When asked if anyone wanted to harm her daughter, her mother said “The whole f**king country” did.

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John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT

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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John Russell is a writer and editor based in New York City. In addition to covering politics and entertainment for LGBTQ Nation, he has written for Vanity Fair, Slate, People, Billboard, and Out. He also writes about film, TV, and pop culture in his free newsletter Johnny Writes…

TERF Activist J.K. Rowling Threatens To Finance Wave Of Attacks On Amnesty International Over Report On Anti-Trans Groups

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/terf-activist-jk-rowling-threatens

“They have sued organizations into the ground.”

s. baum
Jul 14, 2026

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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
345KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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$360,000 and Counting: School Districts Are Spending Big Bucks to Fight Anti-Trans Lawsuits

This is a very important news article.  I hope everyone will read it.  This is scary how a small mostly religious minority wants to erase an entire group of people from existence just for a made up moral certainty that they can’t accept that people different from them exist.   They simply won’t accept that other people can feel differently than they do and they insist that they have the right to deny all rights to LGBTQ+ kids / people.   I remember being a gay teenager hearing these same arguments about people like me in J high school.  How gay kids shouldn’t be allowed in locker rooms as we may get excited by the other kids bodies and lose control and have sex with them right there in the locker room.  It was a huge fight back then about gay teachers as the moral right felt they shouldn’t be teaching kids who might see being gay as normal.  I remember the silly stupid republicans like Sam Nunn claiming no military person wanted to serve with or god forbid shower in the same room as a gay man.  At the time I was gay and in the military and having more sex and great times even with straight guys.  But the parent pushing the claim that their daughter had to change clothes in front of a trans kid went on right wing TV programs to promote the hate.  The school denies that setup existed.  Plus a lot of this is funded and pushed by religious hate groups with a lot of donated money behind them in an attempt to keep the country from progressing as their god is stuck with writings from 2,500 years ago and the majority of hate preachers seem to idolize the 1950s.  I feel so sorry for the trans kids today.  I remember what it was like for me as a gay kid in the public school system.  I was not even out, just different but still I was attacked as a queer faggot.  Why some people hate so deeply and want to act on it and even pass it on to others hopeing they will agree with them I can not understand.  What happened to live and let live?  I believe that if what someone else is doing doesn’t involve me, doesn’t harm me,  then let that person be them.  Qoutes from the article below.   Oh and when did executive orders become laws?   Did congress get dissolved, or are we now ruled by the whim or the racist bigot hater?  Hugs

According to Liz Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher and the founder of STOP Moms for Liberty, the coordinated efforts to undermine the rights of trans students in Illinois mimic a strategy playing out nationwide.

Parallel Title IX investigations have cropped up in at least 18 educational institutions across 10 states following similar complaints about the policies, including in Wisconsin, California, Kansas, Colorado, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Washington. Some of these led to the Trump administration attempting to cut federal funds from public schools in Minnesota, Virginia and Maine.

“You realize it’s so much bigger when you see all the communities around the country that have dealt with this exact same pattern,” Castro told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times.

“When you already exist in a world where there are no safe places and your government is adding to that, it’s dehumanizing. … I worry about the suicide rate [for trans youth] increasing in Illinois,” Lascano says.

Pat Green, who is still grappling with the bullying his son experienced, shares Lascano’s concerns. “From the time he was born, he had this light,” says Green. “When he was at his old school, it was just gone. … I’m really scared about the way things are right now. I remember the fear of wondering if I was going to lose my son. [These groups] are not protecting children. They are causing so much harm.”

 

 

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/360000-and-counting-school-districts

Parents and advocates say coordinated complaints over transgender students are driving legal fees, security costs and emotional strain across Illinois school districts.

Sam Donndelinger and Violet Miller
Jun 16, 2026

$360,000 and Counting: School Districts Are Spending Big Bucks to Fight Anti-Trans Lawsuits

Parents and advocates say coordinated complaints over transgender students are driving legal fees, security costs and emotional strain across Illinois school districts.

Sam Donndelinger and Violet Miller
Jun 16, 2026

Pat Green sits in front of Hinsdale Township High School South, the school his son transferred to after getting bullied for being queer. Photo by Mark Black for the Chicago Sun-Times.

This story was produced in partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times, a nonprofit newspaper.

Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicide and self-harm. If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.

As Pat Green took the stage at the Valley View 365U school board meeting on April 14, 2025, he recalled another night years earlier, when he picked up his 13-year-old son from the hospital. His son, who is trans and had recently come out as queer, had been shoved into a locker so hard that he needed four staples in his forehead.

“I hear the families of LGBTQI+ youth like mine,” Green tells the board. “And I just wanted to say thank you, and for God’s sake, don’t go backwards. … I almost lost the most precious gift God ever gave me.”

In the room with Green were also members of Awake Illinois, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate and anti-government extremist group known for fighting against the rights of trans kids. They had filed a federal civil rights complaint against the district for allegedly violating Title IX by allowing transgender students access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their genders.

When Green’s son, now 25, came out over a decade ago in eighth grade, he faced slurs daily and was told to use the faculty bathroom if he didn’t want to use the girls’ restroom.

“By the end of freshman year, the light my son used to have had turned into dread. Soon after came the cutting, the suicidal ideation, the grades slipping from honor student to barely passing,” Green told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Pat Green and his son. Photo by Mark Black for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Despite Green’s emotional appeal to the school board, Awake Illinois founder Shannon Adcock told the board that “failure to address the Title IX violations will invite severe repercussions, including the termination of federal funding for noncompliant institutions, which would mean $20 million in this district’s case.”

Voices like Adcock’s prompted Green to start attending school board meetings. He noticed an increasing number of complaints and lawsuits from conservative parent groups targeting transgender-inclusive school policies in Illinois that were resulting in legal and financial strain for school districts.

Documents obtained by Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) found that Deerfield School District 109 has paid nearly $360,000—the equivalent of four average teachers’ salaries—to fend off an ongoing lawsuit and pay for security costs spawned from complaints about trans-affirming bathroom and locker room policies.

A breakdown of costs Deerfield District 109 faces to fend off an ongoing lawsuit and pay for security costs spawned from complaints about trans-affirming bathroom and locker room policies, which was obtained via FOIA.

That amount is the equivalent of 37% of all federal funds the district received last year. It included more than $255,000 for legal defense, over $30,000 in school security upgrades and $4,000 for extra staff to screen threats.

Moms for Liberty supporters attend a Deerfield District 109 board meeting at Caruso Middle School on April 10, 2025. Photo by Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere for the Chicago Sun-Times.

“When schools are forced to fight lawsuits over issues that aren’t a problem for the vast majority of people, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. Straight up monetarily, why are we spending so much time prosecuting and persecuting a minuscule part of the population? Why do you want your tax dollars doing that?” Allaina Humphreys, founder of Bolingbrook Pride, told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times.

While these suits are playing out across the state, school officials say they are following policies that align with the Illinois Human Rights Act, which state regulators and courts say require schools to allow transgender students to use facilities consistent with their gender identity. That interpretation was reinforced by the Illinois Human Rights Commission ruling in 2019 and subsequent state guidance issued in 2021.

But none of this is stopping parents like Adcock. “Federal law reigns supreme,” she said at a Naperville district meeting three months after filing the first of her complaints. “Only recently have trans cultists tried to contest [Title IX].” Adcock did not respond to requests for comment.

“I think the muddying of it comes from all of [Trump’s] executive orders,” says Humphreys. “This administration has used them … to dictate policy that it has no right to dictate. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t using it as a basis for legal action.”

Why Deerfield Had to Pay Nearly $360,000

Last spring, during a series of fiery school board meetings, Deerfield parent Nicole Georgas said her cisgender daughter refused to change for gym class after seeing a trans girl in the locker room. Georgas says administrators made her daughter change in front of them and the other student.

“My daughter refused to take part in having her privacy being violated,” Georgas said at a school board meeting last March.

The school district denies the allegations and says they are committed to obeying state law.

Despite this, Georgas—who declined to comment for this story—filed a federal civil rights complaint in March 2025 with the Department of Justice. Conservative legal groups Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies and Liberty Justice Center then cited Georgas’ story in complaints to the Department of Education.

America First Legal—a conservative legal group cofounded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller that has waged a litany of legal attacks against the LGBTQ community—then got in the mix. They urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Deerfield Schools District employees, asking federal prosecutors to look at whether school administrators coordinated enforcement of district policy in a way that violated students’ rights. Though no charges are identified in the referral itself, the letter invokes federal civil rights criminal statutes, which can carry penalties ranging from fines and probation to multi-year prison sentences.

In the Deerfield referral and accompanying press materials, America First Legal repeatedly referred to the transgender student as a “male” or a “boy ‘identifying’ as a girl,” and described school policies recognizing students’ gender identities as “radical gender ideology” and “transgender madness.”

Following this, Georgas sued the district seeking an injunction, punitive damages and money for emotional distress. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights repeated Georgas’ claim that students were “allegedly forced” to change in front of the transgender student, and cited previous Trump administration executive orders regarding gender.

Georgas’ message gained even more attention when she appeared on Laura Ingraham’s and the late Charlie Kirk’s shows, where she used transphobic dog whistles to describe the trans student.

“They have continued to have the biological male student present in the locker room with the girls, and they are absolutely in violation with President Trump’s executive order,” Georgas said on Kirk’s show.

Shortly after her appearance on Fox News, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about Georgas’ case. “We are not going to tolerate such behavior by men pretending to be women. The president will continue to strongly stand for the rights of women and girls, not just in sports and on athletic fields, but also private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms,” Leavitt told the reporter.

Georgas is moving to make her ongoing lawsuit a class action before her daughter graduates from middle school, which would void the case entirely.

Parallel Efforts Across the Country

According to Liz Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher and the founder of STOP Moms for Liberty, the coordinated efforts to undermine the rights of trans students in Illinois mimic a strategy playing out nationwide.

Parallel Title IX investigations have cropped up in at least 18 educational institutions across 10 states following similar complaints about the policies, including in Wisconsin, California, Kansas, Colorado, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Washington. Some of these led to the Trump administration attempting to cut federal funds from public schools in Minnesota, Virginia and Maine.

“They feed these outlets that produce more hate,” Mikitarian told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s a model of misinforming people and making them afraid of something, and that works, especially when it’s people’s children. … [But] it’s a grift and people are catching on.”

Financial Burdens

All of these complaints are costing significant time and money and frustrating many parents who see them as a waste of school resources.

Deerfield parent Elizabeth Castro attended the meetings in her child’s district last year and says it was shocking to look around the country and see the same “manufactured controversy.”

“You realize it’s so much bigger when you see all the communities around the country that have dealt with this exact same pattern,” Castro told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Hundreds of community members and trans-rights supporters applaud and cheer during a Deerfield District 109 board meeting at Caruso Middle School in Deerfield, IL, on April 10, 2025. Photo by Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Deerfield school district still hasn’t heard from the federal government, school officials say. And the Department of Education didn’t respond to a request for updates on the investigations.

“Schools should not be forced to divert hundreds of thousands of dollars away from classrooms, student services, mental health supports, accessibility accommodations and educational programming simply to defend their efforts to support vulnerable students,” Asher McMaher, the executive director of Trans Up Front IL, told Uncloseted Media and the Chicago Sun-Times. “These are vital public resources that should be invested in children, not spent responding to coordinated attacks on transgender youth and the institutions working to protect them.”

Policy Matters

Beyond the lost money and the chaos, the lawsuits and complaints have affected the trans kids who are at the center of these debates.

“The human cost is even greater than the financial one,” says McMaher. “These actions create fear, uncertainty and instability for transgender students and their families, many of whom are already navigating significant challenges. … The greatest tragedy is that these costs are entirely avoidable, yet they continue to grow as attacks on transgender youth are increasingly normalized and encouraged at the national level.”

According to Corey Lascano, LGBTQ coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union, policies inform school culture, which is concerning especially when school is “the only place where [some trans youth] can feel safe to be themselves.”

Corey Lascano, a board member with Trans Up Front IL. Photo by Anthony Vazquez for the Chicago Sun-Times.

“When you already exist in a world where there are no safe places and your government is adding to that, it’s dehumanizing. … I worry about the suicide rate [for trans youth] increasing in Illinois,” Lascano says.

Photo by Mark Black for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Pat Green, who is still grappling with the bullying his son experienced, shares Lascano’s concerns. “From the time he was born, he had this light,” says Green. “When he was at his old school, it was just gone. … I’m really scared about the way things are right now. I remember the fear of wondering if I was going to lose my son. [These groups] are not protecting children. They are causing so much harm.”

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The Right’s Anti-LGBTQ Hysteria is Now Indistinguishable From Satire

While I detest the end song he plays I love Mark’s take on issues.  He doesn’t pull his punches and lays out the facts.  In this case it is important to watch to the end where he elaborates on the current attempt to genocide trans people by making them illegal as Russia has.  Now requiring that no business, event or medical facility that takes any government money can allow any kind of support or positive affirmation of trans people.  He talks about how important it is to let trans youth socially transition and live as the gender they identify with, and to get puberty blockers to not go through the wrong puberty.  He mentions trans children figure out their gender the same way and ages that cis kids do.   Hugs

Panic over the existence of LGBTQ+ people is becoming so ridiculous it’s almost impossible to tell if it’s satire or not. In this video we’ll look at some of the most ridiculous examples of right-wing hysteria over queer people. Well also talk about how conservatives have successfully weaponized their outrage against queer people and how culture influences politics.

The Humanist Report (THR) is a progressive political podcast that discusses and analyzes current news events and pressing political issues. Our analyses are guided by humanism and political progressivism. Each news story we cover is supplemented with thought-provoking, fact-based commentary that aims for the highest level of objectivity.

 

Trans Women BANNED From The Olympics | Trans Guy Reacts

She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway.

The point is both cruelty and wiping trans people from public society.   The not only don’t understand being trans, don’t feel trans so it must not be real, and being transgender seems to upset their god they feel.  Their god created the trans person trans but that doesn’t fit with the world view of these Christians. So if their god is not powerful enough to get rid of trans people then the entire LGBTQ+ they will do it for him.  Sound like they created god in their image rather than being in his.  Hugs

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/kansas-revokes-license-no-gender-change

A trans Kansas resident recently changed her name but not her gender marker on her license, fearing what Kansas may do if she did. The Kansas DMV still flagged her ID.

by Nate Zuke

Andrea Ellis of Wellington, KS was one of many transgender Kansans who opened her mail on February 25 to learn that in less than 24 hours, her driver’s license would be invalid. The letter, issued by the Kansas Department of Revenue, informed her that because House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 (S.B. 244) “requires Kansas-issued driver’s license and identification cards to reflect the credential holder’s sex at birth,” her current license would become “invalid immediately” on February 26.

Ellis had been following the news closely in the past few months. She knew S.B. 244 would be going into effect. But she never expected the state to send her a letter invalidating her license.

That’s because Ellis had never changed the sex marker on her license in the first place.

Ellis last updated her driver’s license on January 7, 2026, after completing a legal name change in December 2025. Fearing her license would be revoked if she updated her sex marker, she deliberately held off on doing so.

“I saw the writing on the wall after listening to [Attorney General] Kobach’s testimony for H.B. 2426,” she said. H.B. 2426, containing the original transphobic legislation sponsored by Republican Kansas Representative Susan Humphries, would later be repurposed as S.B. 244 using the Kansas State Legislature’s “gut and go” trick. This allowed legislators to strip the original contents of S.B. 244, replace it with the contents of H.B. 2426, and pass S.B. 244 without giving the public time to weigh in, dodging accountability for the bill’s contents.

Most bills being passed during this session of the Kansas Legislature won’t go into effect until July 1, 2026. S.B. 244, however, contains a provision that allowed it to go into effect as soon as it was published in the Kansas Register, the state newspaper of record, on February 26. This tactic echoed 2025, when the Kansas Legislature made the same maneuver with Senate Bill 63 to rapidly ban gender-affirming care for minors in Kansas.

On February 25, transgender Kansans like Ellis started receiving letters in the mail informing them that as of February 26, their licenses would be rendered invalid. With no grace period, many recipients of these letters found themselves with less than 24 hours to figure out what to do in a rural state where driving is necessary for most people. 

Ellis was confused about the letter she received, but felt as though she had no choice but to comply. She spends nearly an hour and a half each day driving to and from her job in Park City. Thursdays are one of her days off, so she didn’t have to call out of work on the 26th to go to the DMV. Still, having to suddenly get a new driver’s license was extremely inconvenient, as it would be for anyone.

“Wellington doesn’t have a DMV, so when I got the letter in the mail, I had to decide between going to the DMV in Winfield or the DMV in Derby,” said Ellis. Both locations were over thirty minutes away. 

When Ellis left her house on Thursday morning, her license was officially invalid. She couldn’t comply with the new law unless she was able to get to a DMV, but in order to get to the DMV, she was forced to break the law. Every minute she was on the road, she was at risk of being arrested, jailed, or fined. Fortunately, she reached her destination without any trouble.

Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee. “It seemed like none of the DMV staff had any idea what was going on. I don’t think there was time for them to have any training on how to handle the SB244 stuff,” Ellis said. After presenting her letter, she was forced to surrender the license she had been issued less than two months ago and watch as the DMV employee cut a large chunk out of it, rendering it officially invalid. Her altered license was returned to her alongside her new temporary paper license. Both credentials designated her sex as “M.”

Paper license in hand, Ellis got in her car and started driving northeast to El Dorado, a town roughly 40 minutes away. “With a background like mine, I have to do something when there’s a crisis going on. I can’t just sit still,” Ellis said, referencing her past military service and reflecting on her deployments to Afghanistan. That morning, Equality El Dorado, the town’s local LGBTQ+ organization, had posted on Facebook asking for volunteers to help drive trans Kansans to the DMV, as well as cash donations to help people cover the unexpected cost of a replacement license. Other organizations, such as the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, also sprung into action to try and help transgender community members.

Ellis was ready to pitch in once she arrived in El Dorado, but she was stopped in her tracks. When she parked her car and checked her phone, she learned the Derby DMV had called her and left a message requesting that she come back to the DMV as soon as she could. Apparently, there was a problem with the new license she had just been issued. She tried to call the DMV back to get more information, but no one answered her calls. Frustrated, she got back in her car, canceled a doctor’s appointment she had scheduled for later that afternoon, and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to spend the majority of her day off at the DMV.

The DMV employee had to call a manager over for assistance, and Ellis waited patiently as the DMV staff tried to solve the issue. “They didn’t tell me what the problem was, but I overheard them saying there was a ‘flag’ tied to my ID in their system that they had to remove,” Ellis explained. Eventually, she was given another temporary paper license. Just like the license that had been cut up that morning, just like the first temporary paper license she had been issued as a replacement, and just like her original Alabama birth certificate, the sex marker printed on her newest paper license identified her as “M.” 

By the time Ellis met up with me at Pennant Coffee/Good Company in Wichita, a local queer spot, a coffee shop by day and bar by evening, she’d driven a total of over 131 miles and spent close to three hours on the road. Sitting at Pennant, surrounded by pride flag decorations and chatting with the visibly queer and trans staff, it felt surreal to think that we were in one of the worst states in the U.S. to be transgender. But Ellis’s story proved the extent the state was willing to go to torment its transgender residents.

“I had never even changed my sex marker. All I did was change my name in December, so that’s the only way they could’ve flagged me,” Ellis said. 

The fact that Ellis was flagged for her name change alone suggests the state of Kansas is intensely monitoring transgender citizens. In a state where changing one’s legal sex marker has now been rendered impossible, Ellis’s story shows that even just changing one’s name can be enough for a transgender person in Kansas to be identified, targeted, and forced to surrender their legal documents. 

On February 27, 2026, the ACLU of Kansas announced it would be filing a lawsuit challenging S.B. 244. However, for the time being, S.B. 244 remains in effect. With the 2026 Kansas gubernatorial election looming large in November, it is extremely concerning to see the way the state is already using its power to not only disenfranchise its citizens, but effectively immobilize them in a state where driving is so essential to daily life. 

Nate Zuke (he/him) is originally from Omaha, Nebraska. He has lived in Wichita, Kansas since 2016. His Bluesky handle is @natezuke.bsky.social

Kansas Revokes Driver’s Licenses Of Trans Residents

Kansas Revokes Driver’s Licenses Of Trans Residents

February 26, 2026

The Kansas City Star reports:

Transgender Kansans are being informed on the eve of a new state law going into effect that their driver’s licenses will be considered invalid as of Thursday.

“Please note that the Legislature did not include a grace period for updating credentials. That means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credentials will be invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential,” read letters mailed by the Kansas Department of Revenue’s vehicles division.

“Pursuant to the new law, if the gender/sex indication on the face of your current credential does not match your sex assigned at birth, you are directed to surrender your current credential to the Kansas Division of Vehicles,” reads the letter, which The Star reviewed multiple copies of.

Read the full article.

The law went into effect after Republicans overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach is somehow not in prison for his role in the private border wall scam with Steve Bannon.

https://youtu.be/_FCrMdyhLcU

The New Anti-Trans Rules Are SO Much Worse Than You Think

Right-Wing’s Riley Gaines Grift Exposed

Riley Gaines turned a 5th place tie, not even in the top ranking, into a political money making bigot gig.  She has made hundreds of thousands of dollars pushing people to hate trans athletes using misinformation and lies.  She is a favorite of republicans to have testify in front of legislatures to help them justify making trans kids lives miserable.  Wonder who is funding her?  Religious bigots like billionaire Betsy DeVos.  The DeVos made their money on pyramid schemes and selling Amway. All in the name of their god they lie, make things up, and misinform the public about trans people.   I don’t understand the hate and bile they have for non-straight non-cis people.  Makes their god look ugly.  Hugs