First you know this man was threatened all the way back to the US that his family would be rounded up and tortured if he told of what happened to him in that prison. I wonder if they had to wait until injuries healed before they could let the public see him? Ron says they maybe starved him and had to feed him again to build up his weight and looks. Poor man I hope he is able to safely get his story out. It is clear the charges against him are fraudulent and made up. Just like the government kept saying he was an MS 13 gang member which two courts found he was not. Also he was living in Maryland and his court case is being heard in DC so why is the Justice department trying his new charges in Tennessee? Why not add the charges to the case being heard now in DC. Clearly they hope to get a much more conservative and racist court there than they would in the northern states. I am surprised they did not charge him in Texas. Hugs.
Mistakenly deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in a Tennessee courtroom Friday, hours after he was brought back to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S.
More than two months after the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia from Maryland to his native El Salvador, a two-count indictment unsealed Friday alleges that he participated in a years long conspiracy to haul undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
The return of Abrego Garcia from his native El Salvador follows a series of court battles in which the Trump administration repeatedly said it was unable to bring him back, drawing the country toward the brink of a constitutional crisis when the administration failed to heed the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return.
MORE: Justice Department investigating 2022 Abrego Garcia traffic stop: Sources
He made his initial court appearance Friday evening in the Middle District of Tennessee, answering “Yes, I understand” in Spanish when U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes asked him if he understood the charges against him.
Judge Homes set a hearing for June 13, where Abrego Garcia will be arraigned on charges and the judge will take up the government’s motion to hold him in pre-trial detention on the grounds that he “poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight” He will remain in federal custody in Tennessee pending next week’s hearing.
“If convicted at trial, the defendant faces a maximum punishment of 10 years’ imprisonment for ‘each alien’ he transported,” said the government’s motion for detention, which also contained an allegation — not included in the indictment — that one of Abrego Garcia’s co-conspirators told authorities that Abrego Garcia participated in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother in El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, in an online press briefing, called the charges against his client “an abuse of power.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is placed in the back seat of a truck by ICE agents after arriving in Nashville, Tenn., June 6, 2025.
ABC News
“They’ll stop at nothing at all — even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable — just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case,” said attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“Mr. Garcia is going to be vigorously defending the charges against him,” the attorney said.
The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of noncitizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
Abrego Garcia is alleged to have participated in more than 100 such trips, according to the indictment. Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said.
MORE: Timeline: Wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
Abrego Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy charged in the indictment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, at a Friday afternoon press conference, thanked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for “agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said.
Bondi said that if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges, upon the completion of his sentence he will be deported back to his home country of El Salvador.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche listens during a news conference about Kilmar Abrego Garcia at the Justice Department, June 6, 2025, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia’s attorney said that he’s going to keep fighting to ensure Abrego Garcia receives a fair trial.
“From the beginning, this case has made one thing painfully clear: The government had the power to bring him back at any time. Instead, they chose to play games with the court and with a man’s life,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “We’re not just fighting for Kilmar — we’re fighting to ensure due process rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow, this could be any one of us — if we let power go unchecked, if we ignore our Constitution.”
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys deny that he is an MS-13 member.
The Trump administration has acknowledged in court filings that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador in March was in error, because it violated a U.S. immigration court order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to his native country, according to immigration court records. An immigration judge had determined that Abrego Garcia would likely face persecution there by local gangs that had allegedly terrorized him and his family.
The administration argued, however, that Abrego Garcia should not be returned to the U.S. because he is a member of the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13, a claim his family and attorneys have denied. In recent weeks, Trump administration officials have been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges.
After Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit over his deportation, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
Abrego Garcia was initially sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison but was believed to have later been transferred to a different facility in the country.
The criminal investigation that led to the charges was launched in April as federal authorities began scrutinizing the circumstances of a 2022 traffic stop of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told police they had been working construction in Missouri.
According to body camera footage of the 2022 traffic stop, the Tennessee troopers — after questioning Abrego Garcia — discussed among themselves their suspicions that Abrego Garcia might be transporting people for money because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego Garcia was not ticketed or charged.
The officers ultimately allowed Abrego Garcia to drive on with just a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Asked what circumstances have changed since Abrego Garcia was not taken in custody during that traffic stop in Tennessee, Bondi replied, “What has changed is Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again secure, and thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Abrego Garcia — this investigation continued with actually amazing police work, and we were able to track this case and stop this international smuggling ring from continuing.”
Asked by ABC News’ Pierre Thomas asked whether this should be seen as resolving the separate civil case in Maryland in which a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “There’s a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment. And so the reason why he is back and was returned was because an arrest warrant which was presented to the government and in El Salvador. So there’s, there’s a big difference there as far as whether it makes the ongoing litigation in Maryland moot. I would think so, but we don’t know about this. He just landed today.”
As ABC News first reported last month, the Justice Department had been quietly investigating the Tenessee traffic stop. As part of the probe, federal agents in late April visited a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama to question Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, a convicted felon who was the registered owner of the vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving when stopped on Interstate 40 east of Nashville, sources previously told ABC News. Hernandez-Reyes was not present at the traffic stop.
MORE: Newly released video shows Abrego Garcia’s 2022 Tennessee traffic stop
Hernandez-Reyes, 38, is currently serving a 30-month sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a prior felony conviction for illegal transportation of aliens.
After being granted limited immunity, Hernandez-Reyes allegedly told investigators that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to various locations in the United States, sources told ABC News.
When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said her husband sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites.
“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in mid-April.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who flew to El Salvador and met with Abrego Garcia shortly after his deportation, said Friday that the Trump administration had “relented” regarding his return.
“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems the Trump Admin has relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen posted on X. “This has never been about the man — it’s about his constitutional rights & the rights of all.”
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2012, according to court records. He had been living in Maryland for the past 13 years, and married Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, in 2019. The couple has one child together.
ABC News’ Laura Romero contributed to this report.
June 7, 1712 The Pennsylvania Assembly banned the importation of slaves into the colony.
June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy, a Creole of European and African descent, was arrested and jailed for sitting in a Louisiana railroad car designated for white people only. Plessy had violated an 1890 state law, the Louisiana Separate Car Act, that called for racially segregated rail facilities. He then went to court, claiming the law violated the 13th and 14th amendments, but Judge John Howard Ferguson found him guilty anyhow. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Plessy’s guilty verdict to stand by an 8-1 majority. The decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, established the doctrine of “separate but equal” [separate facilities for white and black people,] institutionalizing and legalizing segregation in the United States public transportation until 1946 in Morgan v. Virginia [see June 3, 1946]. More about Homer Plessy Read the decision
June 7, 1997 Seven activists are arrested for distributing copies of the Bill of Rights outside the Bradbury Science Museum, part of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the primary nuclear research facility in the U.S.
June 4, 1939 During what became known as the “Voyage of the Damned,” the SS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany to the U.S., was turned away from the Florida coast. The ship, also denied permission to dock in Cuba, eventually returned to Europe; many of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps. The reality of what happened The movie based on the history
June 4, 1972 Angela Y. Davis, a former philosophy professor at the University of California, outspoken black leader and self-proclaimed communist, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California. More on Angela Davis Angela Davis wearing a peace button from peacebuttons.info, speaking at The Grays Harbor Institute, Hoquiam, Washington April, 2007
June 4, 1987 New Zealand passed legislation declaring itself nuclear-free. In 1986, New Zealand had banned the entry of U.S. Navy ships from their ports in the belief that they were carrying nuclear weapons or were nuclear-powered. U.S. government protests of the policy led to breakup of the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) defense alliance.The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act of 1987 (which ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) prohibits the: • manufacture, acquisition, possession, control of any nuclear explosive device • aiding, abetting or procuring any person to manufacture, acquire, possess, or have control over any nuclear explosive device • transport, stockpiling, storage, installation, or deployment of any nuclear explosive device.
June 4, 1989 Hundreds of civilians were shot dead by China’s People’s Liberation Army during a bloody military operation in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Students and workers had become part of a growing pro-democracy movement, gathering there continuously for weeks. The Chinese government still officially denies any deaths occurred; thousands who were arrested “disappeared” and remain unaccounted for. “… deaths from the military assault on Tiananmen Square range from 180 to 500; thousands more have been injured . . . thousands of civilians stood their ground or swarmed around military vehicles. APCs [armored personnel carriers] were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.”* *From a comprehensive overview prepared by the National Security Archive based on formerly classified U.S. Government documents
I admit my life was different but from the time I was five I knew I was attracted to males. Specifically both sexually and emotionally. One of the hell spawn female siblings even held me down to pound the point that I was “queer” into me. I did not understand why it was wrong, after all they were the ones telling me what to do and farming me out to their teen boyfriends. I craved being held by the boys and not so much the girls. But all the other gay and lesbian people I have talked to knew early also. Preteen time frame. 7 or 8 and up they knew they were gay and either knew they had to hide it or knew they couldn’t so had to live with being attacked for it. These people who think it is a choice, a fad, or a phase need to ask themselves the famous question. When did they know they were cis and straight and was it a choice they made. No they just felt it all their lives, they simply knew it. Same for the LGBTQ+. The only difference is straight cis kids see themselves everywhere from birth. Mommies and daddies, they see themselves in the older kids around them, in the news, movies, TV shows, and the books they read. It feels so natural to them they just don’t question it. They are lucky. Until recently like in the last decade LGBTQ+ kids did not see themselves reflected in society. No movies had kids like them, no books in the library had kids like them. Some kids did not even know the words for how they felt. It was changing in the last ten years. Schools made a push for inclusion and tolerance, movies showed LGBTQ+ kids, books had them as plots or characters. Kids could see themselves and be proud. That is what the haters, the anti-trans / anti-gay bigots want to remove. The ability of kids who are different from the majority to see themselves represented positively in society. It is why they write and pass don’t say gay bills, and why they ban books. It is why they try to ban drag shows and pride events. These people who demand a straight cis world with only them showing in public are terrified of a world where people can be different. To them those who are the other must be destroyed, ideas of acceptance and tolerance must be erradicated and removed. All because they don’t feel different from the majority so the difference must not be real. But it is and we need to realize the scars left on kids who grew up in the times when they never seen themselves represented in society. We must not go backward in time, regressing to a time of hate. Hugs
LGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
A new poll from Pew Research Center sheds some light on just how early LGBTQ+ people are aware of their identities. The study of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. found that most respondents understood their identity before the age of 14, with a substantial portion knowing about their identities before the age of 10.
Among gay and lesbian adults, 36% said that they felt they were gay or lesbian before the age of 10 and 35 first felt they were gay or lesbian from ages 10 to 13. Only a minority – 29% – had their first feelings about their sexuality after the age of 14.
The numbers were similar for transgender people. Approximately 33% felt they might be transgender before age 10, and 25% felt the same way between ages 10 to 13. Only 19% had their first feelings about being transgender after the age of 18.
Bisexual people tended to know the latest, but even a majority of bisexual people said that they had their first thoughts about being queer before age 18. Half – 50% – had their first feelings of being bisexual before age 14.
The question often comes up in discussions of LGBTQ+ youth, with many on the right insisting that people can’t know their identities before adulthood. Often, these people claim that only LGBTQ+ people can’t know their identities before adulthood, but then support heterosexuality and cisgender identities in young people.
But these statements fly in the face of LGBTQ+ people’s lived experiences, which often include years of hiding their identities before they create a safer space for themselves to live authentically as adults.
While LGBTQ+ respondents generally first thought about their queer identities when they were very young, most waited until they were older to tell others. While 71% of gay and lesbian people said that they first knew about their sexuality before age 14, only 13% said that they told someone before that age. Approximately 58% of trans people first thought they might be trans before age 14, but only 15% told someone before that age.
This also contradicts the rightwing narrative that young people are saying that they are trans or gay to gain social acceptance and not because they actually identify as such. In reality, young people are saying that they’re straight or cisgender when they actually aren’t, likely to try and get social acceptance.
Pew broke down the results even more and showed that gay men generally felt that they were gay at a younger age than lesbian women, with 40% saying they were younger than 10 years old when they first thought they were gay, as opposed to 29% of lesbian women.
| Pew Research Center
Bisexual women, on the other hand, likely knew earlier than bisexual men. 53% of bi women said they felt they might be bi before they were 14 years old, while just 40% of bi men said the same.
| Pew Research Center
The poll was conducted in January of this year and involved a sample of 3,959 adult LGBTQ+ Americans. The survey asked about a wide variety of topics, including support from family and friends, ties to the larger LGBTQ+ community, and social acceptance.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
At the end of the video the Reverend says our only job is to love god by loving others. The only question is … how much will you love. Good thoughts in this video. Had the church been like this when I was a teen, had the church been inclusive like this when I was a little boy being molested by the Pastor I would have stayed in the faith, in the church. I might not have believed in the magic parts of the bible and I might have quibbled over the facts, but I would have stayed for the community. The environment of people who enjoyed each other’s company and loved the comradery of fellowship. Sadly the churches I saw as a child, as a teen, and as an adult lost people because rather than love, they clung to hate. The joy of feeling better than some other group, of being able to look down on them, to revel in negative emotions meant more to them than hugging those different that maybe they did not understand. They set themselves up as god judging others. Not as a loving flock, but as deciders over who was worthy to be in the flock. They were not the sheep, they wanted to be the Sheppard. Hugs
(And let me interject that I know that sometimes I’m a language/punctuation police officer, but I despise the term “reverse discrimination.” Either discrimination has happened, or it hasn’t, to be proven to whoever decides. There is no “reverse discrimination”. grr. Also, this is not a spoiler nor my opinion on the case, it’s simply that I guess it’s good for some people that I do not sit upon the SCOTUS, because I’d want to dismiss and tell them to use appropriate words so that the court could accurately decide based upon the evidence of discrimination, without being distracted by superfluous words. Please be at liberty to laugh at me about this. Then read all the following. -A)
It’s June 1, and that means we’re starting the last month, more or less, of this Supreme Court term. The cases the Court has had briefing on and heard oral argument in will all be decided by the end of this month, although some years it spills over into the first week of July.
We never know which cases are coming next. The Court doesn’t decide them in the order they hear them argued. But usually the biggest, most impactful cases aren’t decided until the end.
This week for “The Week Ahead,” I’ve got a scorecard with some of the most important still-undecided cases for this term on it. The goal is to give you some background to refer to, so when you hear the Court has announced a decision in a certain case you’ll be prepared to understand its significance.
Here they are, in order of when they were argued, although that’s likely to have little to nothing to do with when we will see opinions.
U.S. v. Skrmetti
The issue in this case is whether states can ban gender-affirming care for trans youth in the context of a 2023 Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care, like puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for transgender patients who are minors. The Biden administration intervened in the case and was a party along with three transgender teens and their parents. That changed with the change in administrations. The Trump Justice Department, as you would expect, is on the other side of the case.
A key issue in the case is whether denying treatment to trans youth that is available to their gender conforming peers violates the Constitution by denying them equal protection under the law. A federal district court judge held that it did. But the Court of Appeals reversed. About 25 other Republican dominated states have similar laws. The result in this case will apply beyond Tennessee.
At oral argument, the conservative Justices seemed disinclined to accept the argument that this law is a form of sex discrimination, even though cisgender kids will be able to access treatment that transgender people won’t be able to receive if these laws stand. But the votes seemed to be in place to permit Tennessee and other states to keep their restrictive laws in place.
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
The case involves a 2023 Texas law that is supposed to keep minors from accessing pornography online. It requires websites to verify a person’s age before they are admitted to the site. But an industry group that calls itself the Free Speech Coalition sued, claiming the law violates the rights of adults who want to access the content, an impermissible burden on free speech. The ACLU is on their side in the case.
There was at least some indication at oral argument that the Justices are aware we no longer live in a world of dial up internet connections and want to revisit the standards that are used to “protect kids.” The technical legal issue is whether the court of appeals used the wrong legal standard to decide the case. Instead of using the highest standard of review and requiring the Texas law to pass “strict scrutiny” before it could burden the adults’ right to have access to protected speech, they only required that there be a “rational basis” connecting the law to its intent to protect minors.
Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services
The Court’s decision in this case could potentially signal a sea change in reverse discrimination employment litigation. The case involves a straight woman who claims she faced “reverse discrimination” on the job because she wasn’t gay, leading her to be passed over for promotion opportunities. The issue is whether a plaintiff who is a member of a majority group has to show that her employer is the “unusual” one who discriminated against the majority, before bringing a case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If she wins, this sort of reverse discrimination case could become easier to bring.
The plaintiff lost out on a promotion to a lesbian woman. She was subsequently demoted and the position she was removed from was given to a gay man. All of this started 13 years into her employment, after a new boss, who was a gay woman, became her supervisor.
There was speculation following oral argument that the plaintiff might win unanimously. Justice Sotomayor seemed to say she thought the plaintiff might have a valid claim, noting that based on the record before the Court, there was “something suspicious” about what happened. The consensus among the Justices seemed to be that everyone had to be treated equally.
Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos
There are two technical legal issues in this case, but together, they add up to an answer to the question of whether Mexico can sue U.S. gunmakers for what it has long maintained is their responsibility for the epidemic of gun violence within its borders. Mexico argues that a number of U.S. gunmakers made it possible for traffickers to illegally purchase firearms in the U.S., only for them to be provided to Mexican drug cartels.
The Court will decide: (1) Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States is the proximate cause of alleged injuries to the Mexican government stemming from violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico; and (2) whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States amounts to “aiding and abetting” illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some of their products are unlawfully trafficked.
If the Court decides in Mexico’s favor, its lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers will move forward.
Louisiana v. Callais
This is the Louisiana redistricting case. The issues revolve around whether a Louisiana congressional district created to comply with the Voting Rights Act resulted in an unconstitutional gerrymander that discriminates based on race. The Callais plaintiffs are a group of “non-African Americans” who say the redistricted map violates the Constitution because it takes race into account in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Although the Court may be inclined to do away with the Voting Rights Act at some point, this case is reminiscent of a 2023 gerrymandering case out of Alabama, where a 5-4 majority that included Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh upheld the Voting Rights Act and forced Alabama to comply with it, rejecting maps drawn by the state legislature that made it all but impossible for Black citizens to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.
This case might have a similar outcome. It has similarly complicated facts and an up-and-down history on appeal. It comes down to whether Louisiana, whose population is about 1/3 Black, will have a second Black opportunity district. The technical issues involve whether a three-judge district court in this case was mistaken when it ruled that race predominated in the Louisiana legislature’s decision on maps, whether it erred in finding those decisions couldn’t pass the strict scrutiny test and a set of preconditions known as the Gingles factors, and whether the case is the sort of “non-justiciable” matter that should be resolved through the political process, not decided in the courts.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
The issue here is whether religious parents’ rights are violated when a school board doesn’t give them the ability to opt out from having LGBTQ-themed books available to their children in elementary school. The issue is presented as: Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.
At oral argument, the Court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic toward the parents.
Trump v. CASA, Inc. (consolidated with Trump v. Washington and Trump v. New Jersey)
This is the birthright citizenship case that was argued only earlier this month. We discussed it here. The issue isn’t whether Trump can end birthright citizenship. Rather, it’s whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ preliminary injunctions except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states while the litigation works its way through the courts.
It’s hard to believe that it was just over a year ago that I sat outside, across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court building in the Senate Swamp, listening to the oral argument and preparing to comment on it in real time. (snip)
At the time, I wrote, “The case is all about Donald Trump and whether he can be prosecuted for the most serious of his crimes against the American people, trying to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election. It’s also about the legacy of the Roberts Court and whether history will view the already unpopular Justices as the Court that gave away democracy.”
Overall, there are more than 30 cases remaining on the Court’s dockets. There are also a number of procedural and other issues pending in cases that haven’t been fully briefed for a decision on the merits this term. This is the so-called shadow docket, where litigants ask the courts to make decisions in cases characterized as emergencies. Cases involving deportations and DOGE are among them. And also, the wild card, a number of cases still percolating through the lower courts where the issues aren’t yet ripe enough to be before the Supreme Court, but could become so in the next few months, at least enough to merit a trip to the shadow docket and interfere with the Supreme Courts’ summer break. The biggest question that remains for me is whether this Court will continue down the path it set itself upon last term, or will tell Trump no in a meaningful way?
Welcome to the new week. Thanks for being with me at Civil Discourse as we approach our third anniversary.
Wow. A group that initially included no Jews hatched a plan to make support for Palestine a crime. The US is following their playbook and supporting the mass killing & removal of Palestinians.Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u…
Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsProposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenientwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…
OK I admit this guy is a scholar so he uses words and phrases that are sometimes hard for me to follow with my limited education. But I do understand enough to follow what he is saying. Charley Kirk is full of shit on what he thinks they bible says because he is letting his own bigotry and prejudices create what the passages mean for him rather than research it with people more knowledgeable. Jesus and the bible were not against homosexuality as we understand it because they did not see sexuality and sex acts the same way we do. The sin of Sodom was lack of hospitality and men wanting to take a higher sexual role than angels. The people of the time of the bible were like young macho men types today, worried about what looked manly enough, and putting your penis in someone regardless of sex was manly. But the person who took another person in them was not, they were lessor. Women were viewed as lessor, inferior, and so were men that took another male’s penis inside them. It was not about pleasure or love, it was all about status. One thing I like about this guy is he freely admits the bible is context driven and doesn’t know what we know and understand today, that in some areas the morals we have today are superior to that of the bibles for example slavery. Hugs.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Subscribe
Inch by inch, day by day, and legal battle after legal battle, trans Montanans are dismantling the unconstitutional laws proposed by Republicans meant to destroy trans lives, and indeed, trans life itself.
Last week, they were able to let out a sigh of relief—for now. A Montana judge issued a preliminary injunction on HB 121, which would ban trans and intersex people from using gender-separated public facilities, such as bathrooms or changing rooms, that differ from their sex assigned at birth.
This decision follows a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the law from earlier this year, instituted after legal rights groups like the ACLU challenged it in court for violating Montanans’ right to privacy under the state constitution. A preliminary injunction is a more steadfast barrier—it means the law won’t take effect until after legal proceedings conclude, if ever.
The Attorney General for the State of Montana, like many anti-trans actors, is defending HB 121 using the thinly-veiled premise of “protecting women” from sexual violence. But the injunction filings indicate that the judiciary isn’t buying it.
“The State has not shown even a rational basis for the Act,” wrote Judge Shane A. Vannatta, who oversees a Montana District Court. “The State does not provide evidence of trans female offenses against [cis] women or evidence of offenses being committed in covered entities to support the necessity of immediate implementation of the Act.”
Instead, the court found that anti-trans bathroom bans do not protect women from harm. It only serves to stoke violence against trans women and cis women alike—everyone’s gender and sex becomes subject to public debate when these laws are put in place.
“Each individual observed walking into a restroom of a covered entity does directly and indirectly disclose that individual’s transgender or intersex identity, anatomy, and genetics,” the filing said. “All Montanans regardless of gender […] will not be subject to the prying eyes of others or to governmental snooping or regulation.”
Vannatta further notes that it is already illegal for people of any gender or sex to commit a sex crime, and that there is “no evidence” to support the notion that trans or intersex people “have a predisposition toward such offenses.”
He added that the state’s purported concerns were “disingenuous” and purely “conjecture.”
In reality, trans women—especially those of color—are more likely than any other demographic to be the victims of violent crime. And by using the law to force trans people to out themselves every time they use a public restroom, or to embolden self-deputized gender police, so-called “trans bathroom bans” create a greater risk of violence for everyone. There are countless stories of cis and trans people alike being accosted in bathrooms precisely because of the anti-trans panic these policies create.
The filing further concluded that trans women have been relentlessly targeted by the state government and are in dire need of protection. “Transgender Montanans have been subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment and have been relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process,” Vannatta noted.
The fight against HB 121 is not over, but State Representative Zooey Zephyr—who would be legally forced into the men’s room under the bill her colleagues passed—says she is hopeful.
“The Montana Supreme Court has been clear: every law that targets the trans community is a clear invasion by the government into the privacy of transgender people,” she told Erin in the Morning. “These laws are driven by animus against the community. I expect this law—like all laws driven by the anti-trans fervor—to be struck down by Montana’s courts.”
(Editor’s Note: For transparency, Erin in the Morning founder Erin Reed is the loving wife to the aforementioned Rep. Zooey Zephyr.)
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
LGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
Scottie's Playtime 