I am posting the meme below because it explains the intrusive thoughts issue I have struggled with for so long and for a while got really overwhelming. But I am NOT suicidal. Again please don’t worry about that, I am not self harming and I am not suicidal. I am just struggling. Links for any that need help below given with love. Hugs
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, TrevorLifeline 1-866-488-7386 the Trevor Project’s crisis counselors are just a text, chat, or phone call away. Completely confidential and free LGBTQ hotline.
I really like the reporting of this person. I strongly suggest everyone subscribe to her substack and support her efforts if you can. But even though this is 7 days old it is really important as it shows how feelings are changing on protecting trans people. Hate won’t win if we and our politicians fight back. When they had the right takes advantage to attack the rights of the LGBTQ+. Hugs
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Early Tuesday morning, final appropriations bills for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education—and related agencies—were released, marking the last major funding measures to be negotiated in the aftermath of the record-breaking government shutdown fight in 2025. That standoff featured multiple appropriations bills loaded with anti-transgender riders and poison pills for Democrats, ultimately ending in a short-term continuing resolution that punted many of those provisions to the end of January. While other “minibus” packages funding individual agencies moved forward, the Education and HHS bills were conspicuously absent, as they contained some of the most sweeping and consequential anti-trans riders ever proposed in Congress. Now, with the final bills released, it is clear that no anti-transgender riders were included—meaning transgender people will largely be spared new congressional attacks through most of 2026 should they pass as-is.
As the government shut down on Oct. 1, the state of appropriations bills needed to reopen the federal government for any extended period was extraordinarily dire for transgender people. Dozens of anti-transgender riders were embedded across House appropriations bills, even as those provisions were largely absent from the Senate’s versions. The riders appeared throughout nearly every funding measure, from Commerce, Justice, and Science to Financial Services and General Government. The most extreme provisions, however, were concentrated in the House HHS and Education bills, including language barring “any federal funds” from supporting gender-affirming care at any age and threatening funding for schools that support transgender students. Taken together, those measures would have posed a sweeping threat to transgender people’s access to education and health care nationwide.
Those fears eased somewhat when the government reopened under a short-term continuing resolution funding operations through the end of January. In the months that followed, Democrats notched a series of incremental victories for transgender people, advancing multiple appropriations “minibus” packages that stripped out anti-trans riders as the government was funded piece by piece. As amendment after amendment fell away, those wins grew more substantial, including the removal of a proposed ban on gender-affirming medical care from the NDAA—even after it had passed both the House and Senate. Still, the most consequential question remained unresolved: what would ultimately happen to the high-impact anti-trans provisions embedded in the HHS and Education bills.
Now, the package has been released—and for the moment, transgender people can breathe again. The final HHS and Education bills contain no anti-transgender provisions: no ban on hospitals providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, no threats to strip funding from schools that support transgender students or allow them to use the bathroom, and no mandate forcing colleges to exclude transgender students from sports or activities like chess or esports. The bills are strikingly clean. As such, they avert yet another protracted shutdown fight in which transgender people are once again turned into political bargaining chips—and, at least for now, remove Congress as the immediate vehicle for new federal attacks, should they pass as-is.
When asked about the successful stripping of anti-trans provisions, a staffer for Representative Sarah McBride tells Erin In The Morning, “Rep. McBride works closely with her colleagues every day to defend the rights of all her constituents, including LGBTQ people across Delaware. In the face of efforts by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to roll back health care and civil rights, she was proud to work relentlessly with her colleagues in ensuring these funding bills did not include anti-LGBTQ provisions. It takes strong allies in leadership and on committees to rein in the worst excesses of this Republican trifecta, Rep. McBride remains grateful to Ranking Members DeLauro, Murray, and Democratic leadership for prioritizing the removal of these harmful riders.”
This does not mean that transgender people will not be targeted with policies and rules that affect them in all areas of life. The Trump administration has acted without regard to law in forcing bans on sports, pulling funding from schools and hospitals, and banning passport gender marker updates. The Supreme Court has been increasingly willing to let the office of the presidency under Trump do whatever it would like to transgender people. However, the lack of passage of bills targeting transgender people means that these attacks will only last for as long as we have Trump in the White House, and a future president should hopefully be easily able to reverse the attacks.
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it has been reported that after tRump and Walz talked that tRump is willing to have the FBI cooperate and work with local law enforcement on the shooting investigation. But will the Stephen Miller / Kash Patel group really do what tRump wants or will they mess everything up for the local officials to prevent them from pressing charges. Hugs
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was refused access to evidence regarding Alex Pretti’s killing by Border Patrol officers — despite a signed judicial warrant.
Minnesota officials said they were denied access to the scene where Alex Pretti, a 37-year old intensive care unit nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot by Customs and Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Pretti’s killing marks the second fatality of a U.S. citizen — in the same city, and in less than three weeks — as the Trump administration conducts a brutal immigration crackdown operation in Minnesota, despite objections from state and local officials.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said on Saturday morning that “the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it, period.”
The state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Force Investigations Unit, which was created in 2020 by the state legislature, typically leads the charge when looking into use-of-force incidents involving law enforcement officers. But in Pretti’s case, the agency was blocked from accessing evidence by federal officials.
“We’re in uncharted territory here. It’s been a longstanding understanding – both in our state and across the country – that entities like the BCA that conduct 80 plus percent of officer-involved shootings investigations across the United States, are asked to do these investigations of federal agents involved in officer involved shootings,” BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in a Saturday press conference. “There certainly can be a new process going forward if the federal government would like to do that, and federal agencies, but that has not been a discussion that’s been had so that we can provide clear understanding to citizens.”
The BCA was also eventually blocked from investigating the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer.
Unlike in Good’s case, state officials obtained a signed judicial warrant to allow them access to materials needed to conduct their own investigation into Pretti’s killing. Still, Department of Homeland Security officials denied them access, and the investigation is now solely being led by the DHS.
Evans said that without cooperation and access to evidence, it will be difficult to conduct a thorough investigation. The BCA has offered to share everything obtained in its investigation, but has not heard back from federal officials in charge.
The DHS did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment about the BCA’s request.
Meanwhile, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said that her office is conducting an investigation separately from the federal government, adding that “there is other evidence other than what was taken here by federal agents.”
“It’s really important for us to collect as much as we can,” Moriarty told MS NOW, underscoring that state and local officials also have jurisdiction.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit on Saturday on behalf of the Hennepin County Attorney’s office and the BCA to prevent the destruction of any evidence in the Pretti shooting. Hours later, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order, directing federal agencies to preserve and not alter any evidence collected.
In a statement to MS NOW, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “any claim that the federal government would ‘destroy’ evidence is a ridiculous attempt to divide the American people and distract from the fact that our law enforcement officers were attacked — and their lives were threatened — yesterday. We are actively investigating this matter and will continue to do so as we do for any officer involved shooting. DHS eagerly awaits any effort from Minnesota to help our officers arrest criminal aliens in the meantime.”
David Noriega contributed reporting to this article.
I watched them all but I know many don’t have that kind of time or watch the shows on cable TV. But they are of different lengths and around the same theme, which is ICE. Hugs
At Stephen Miller direction the republicans stripped out of the funding bill an amendment that would have made it illegal for ICE to deport US citizens. Think on what that means. Hugs
It seems if you watch this to the end that there is a fight in the upper ranks over who is in control over ICE and the CBP people. Stephen Miller and Noem want Bovino because they love the violence and control, and tRump wants to cool things off and he wants Homan because while Homan is an asshole he doesn’t want the spectacle of violence and arresting mom’s dads, and kids. He wants to prioritize what he has always claimed on news shows, the going after the worst of the worst, rapist, murderers,and violent criminals. From clip of other shows I have watched it is so bad Homan and Noem doing even talk to each anymore. However Homan was the one who implemented Stephen Millers separating the children from their parents at the border. Hugs
I love this. ICE concentration camp prisons no matter for children or adults are rife with abuse and mis treatment. We need to stop these for profit prisons and stop ICE while making the conditions better at existing facilities. They have the money, the big billionaire bailout bill gave them more money than some country’s militaries. Hugs
She has some good ideas that the people are doing to resist ICE including helping the people who are too terrified to leave their homes. Hugs
I am sorry that the corrupted courts are the last resort. We must try to use them, if only to set a record for the future. Hugs
A bunch of democratic politicians / congress critters where on Ms Now talking about ICE. I won’t share all of them but no where have I seen leadership such as Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. Hugs
If you go to the link 3 /4 of the way through the article it will open a page that details some of the abuse. Sorry I can’t post it as I couldn’t finish reading it. I started to get triggered. Been there made to do that. Hugs
Victoria López, Advocacy and Legal Director, ACLU of Arizona
Sandra Park, Former Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women’s Rights Project
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government impose criminal liability on correctional facility staff who have sexual contact with people in their custody. These laws recognize that any sexual activity between detainees and detention facility staff, with or without the use of force, is unlawful because of the inherent power imbalance when people are in custody. Yet, one immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse.
E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time of the assault, E.D. was 19 years old.
She filed suit against the detention center and its staff for their failure to protect her from sexual violence, even though they were aware of the risk. The record in the case, E.D. v. Sharkey, shows that her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes.
Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their assessment that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because the Berks Family Residential Center is an immigration detention facility rather than a jail or prison.
The ACLU, ACLU of Pennsylvania, and partner organizations filed an amicus brief this week supporting E.D., explaining that officials wield such tremendous control over the lives of those in their custody, including through coercion and exploitation, that consent to sexual contact cannot be freely given in these circumstances. We also discuss how sexual violence in custodial settings is a serious and pervasive issue, including in immigration detention. For many years, the ACLU, various advocacy groups, and immigrants themselves have reported on the unsafe conditions in immigration detention, including sexual violence and the retaliation that detained immigrants face when they decide to come forward with these violations.
A recent investigation into sexual abuse in immigration detention found that there were 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse filed with ICE between 2012 and March 2018. In 2017 alone, there were 237 allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention facilities.
Other reports include a 2014 complaint documenting widespread allegations of sexual harassment at the Karnes County Residential Center, where more than 500 women were detained with their children. In 2017, advocates filed a complaint on behalf of eight immigrants who recounted their experiences of sexual violence while detained in various ICE detention facilities across the country.
The Government Accountability Office reported in 2013 that officials at immigration prisons and jails failed to report 40 percent of sexual abuse allegations to the ICE headquarters. After looking at 10 different detention centers and analyzing over 70 cases of sexual abuse, researchers found that only 7 percent of 215 allegations of sexual assault in immigration detention facilities from 2009 to 2013 were substantiated, calling into question the thoroughness of investigations as well as reporting and oversight mechanisms.
Sexual violence impacts immigrants across federal agencies that are charged with immigrant detention. Most recently in Arizona, the state’s Department of Health Services, which licenses facilities that are used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to detain migrant children, moved to revoke the license of Southwest Key, a nonprofit contractor that rakes in about a half a billion dollars to detain migrant children in facilities across the country. The state moved to revoke the group’s license because Southwest Key failed to comply with required employee background checks. At least three former employeeshave been arrested for sexually abusing migrant children. One was convicted, and one of the facilities was closed down following allegations of staff abusing children.
These are not isolated cases. They clearly show that officials are not doing enough to detect and respond to incidents of sexual abuse in immigration detention. The result is that immigrants are put at serious risk for sexual violence while they are detained.
The Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed by Congress in 2003 to protect against sexual assault in prisons and jails across the country. It took the Department of Homeland Security until 2014 to finalize regulations implementing PREA. Even with those regulations in place, DHS PREA standards do not protect immigrants in all detention facilities because the agency has taken the position that those requirements can only apply when the agency enters into new contracts or renews or modifies old ones.
Rather than meaningfully addressing these endemic problems in immigration detention, the Trump administration continues to aggressively target immigrants and asylum seekers by stripping away legal protections, ramping up enforcement, and expanding immigration detention. E.D.’s case highlights the real need for greater protections against sexual abuse and more robust oversight and accountability measures in immigration detention, not less.
There are videos at the link that doesn’t appear to embed. In each of these ICE unwarranted shootings we see that the ICE gang thug shooter was putting their fellow gang thugs in danger from the bullets. Also the videos clearly shot that Pretti was shot in the back and the gang thug ICE people were overjoyed and counting the bullet wounds as they made sure to get their stories straight for the bosses who would applaud their courage of ganging up on, beating a man on the ground and then shooting him in the back. Really brave souls. Hugs
Kristi Noem made public statements about Alex Pretti and details surrounding his fatal shooting. But the videos tell a dramatically different — and tragic — story.
Statement #1: “An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a news conference, adding that the suspect was “brandishing” a firearm.
Video shows Pretti had no visible firearm in his hands or on his body in the minutes before he interacted with immigration officers but was using a cell phone to record immigration raids in the area. This is allowable under the First Amendment, as long as it doesn’t interfere with law enforcement activity, such as an arrest.
The officers do not draw their firearms on Pretti, which would be standard training for how federal law enforcement should react if they see a suspect brandishing a gun.
The federal legal definition of “brandishing” is broad, stating that it doesn’t require the weapon to be directly visible, but that its presence is used to intimidate. There is no evidence from the video that Alex Pretti was using a gun for this purpose.
Statement #2:“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”
One of the videos shows Pretti carrying a cell phone in his right hand and appearing to film immigration officers and agents in the area. It’s not yet known if he had had previous interactions with the officers or if this was the first encounter. The officers push him back by his chest to the curb; Pretti continues to keep his phone up, filming the interaction.
In another video, he is seen trying to help up a woman who is steps away and whom a masked officer has pushed down into the ice on a curb. Pretti immediately steps between the two, putting his left hand near the officer, who then pepper sprays him. Pretti raises his left arm and then lowers it as he turns around toward the woman who has been pushed down, the officer now behind him as he knocks Pretti to the ground, joined by several other agents.
Statement #3: “The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.”
Pretti is seen struggling at first when at least three officers knock him to the ground, eventually joined by four more, but appears to be largely held down with his stomach to the ground and his arms in front of his body. Several moments into the officers’ effort to detail and control Pretti, an officer can be heard on video calling out “gun,” apparently to make fellow officers aware. Within a second or two, an agent fires the first shot. Pretti’s body crumples onto the ground.
A source close to the DHS probe told MS NOW that Pretti had a firearm in his holster, which agents retrieved at some point in the interaction. Minneapolis’ police chief said Pretti was a legal owner of a weapon with a permit to carry it.
Statement #4: “Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”
Video shows Pretti’s hands pinned in front of him on the ground until he is shot, with no evidence he reached for a weapon. Some video clips appear to show another officer reaching towards Pretti’s waistband, retrieving something with his hand that looks like a gun, and stepping away. At roughly the same moment of the officer’s movement away from the suspect and has retrieved with his hand an object that appears to be a gun, someone can be heard saying “gun.”
The border patrol agent fires within a second or two of the officer retrieving this object. A total of ten shots were fired. In the aftermath of the shooting, however, video shows two officers desperately searching the dead man’s body and one yells emphatically, “Where’s the gun?” One officer over the body — and it’s not clear which — yells, “I need scissors. I need someone to cut this shit,” as he tugs at the dead man’s clothes.
Multiple seasoned law enforcement officers told MS NOW that they have been unable to see the justification for the shooting. Some said the video of the officers searching for a gun on Pretti’s dead body suggests to them that the agent who shot Pretti did so believing he had a weapon on his person that was an imminent threat when a fellow officer said “gun.”
If that is true, the officer may have wrongly believed Pretti posed an active threat to his life and the life of others. Earlier video of the fracas suggests instead that the firearm had been safely retrieved and the threat was removed.
Former FBI agent Rob D’Amico said that simply hearing the word “gun” does not authorize an officer in a scuffle to shoot to kill. “You have to see that gun be in a position for it to be used,” D’Amico said. “Many, many times I’ve been in situations like this, the gun has fallen on the ground and someone yelled ‘gun,’ and we didn’t just blindly shoot the person.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in an interview on Face The Nation on Sunday that the videos make clear Pretti was simply engaging in his legal right to free speech, and did not start the confrontation with officers. He said the volume of shootings by “Operation Surge” officers makes plain that their protocols and methods are flawed and dangerous.
“The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone,” O’Hara said. “And now this is the second American citizen that has been killed. It’s the third shooting within three weeks.”
Scottie's Playtime 