Dr Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Mehmet Oz, better-known as Dr Oz, has raged about โ$150k penis surgeryโ for trans youth, but he failed to cite any facts.
Dr Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announced on Thursday (18 December), alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, measures that will ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The ban, part of Dr Ozโs bid to end โtaxpayer funding of sex rejecting procedures for children in Medicaid and CHIP [childrenโs health insurance program], full stopโ, takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare.
The first prevents doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to trans youth under the age of 18, while the second blocks all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.ย
Medicaid, which is the health care program that covers low-income Americans, alongside older and disabled citizens, is taken at most hospitals, meaning the proposals could have a wide-ranging effect, as perย New Hampshire Public Radio.ย
During announcing the proposals, Kennedy referred to gender-affirming care as โmalpracticeโ, while Dr Oz went completely off topic.ย
The 65-year-old began ranting about the prices of bottom surgery, which is very rarely performed on individuals under 18.ย
โA vaginoplasty โย a procedure a child does not need โย costs $60,000,โ he claimed, adding: โShockingly, a phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, costs, on average, in America, $150,000 per child.
โI do believe, with doing some work, that these prices have continued to increase due to increased manufactured demand,โ he continued. โA scrotalplasty, where you add testicles? Thatโs extra.โ
Dr Oz didnโt clarify where he pulled his quoted figures from, but according to theย Gender Confirmation Center, the price of a vaginoplasty is between $23,000 and $24,500, while phalloplasty ranges between $35,000 and $50,000.
According to 2025 data from the Williams Institute, about one per cent of people aged 13 and olderย identify as trans in the US, and despite the proposals attacking gender-affirming care for trans youth, multiple studies show that surgeries are rarely performed on minors.
A 2024 study byย researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on trans or gender diverse youth (TGD) aged 12 and younger in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. The majority of surgeries were chest surgeries.
Co-authorย Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in theย Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said: โWe found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that US surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care.โย
Lead author Dannie Dai, research data analyst in theย Department of Health Policy and Management, added: โOur findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.โ
Share your thoughts!ย Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
A same-sex female couple in Pennsylvania is suffering through a โKafkaesque nightmareโ after one of the women was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when she showed up for a regularly scheduled immigration check-in.
ICE agents detained her and shipped her to a detention center in California.
Xiomara Suarez, 28, arrived in the U.S. in 2022 seeking asylum after fleeing Peru, where she was stalked and endured a violent sexual assault based on her sexual orientation. In a sworn declaration to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officialsย reviewed byย Advocate, Suarez said Peruvian police refused to acknowledge her complaints or offer protection, and she feared for her life.
Suarez was admitted to the U.S. on โparoleโ as her request for permanent status was processed.
In February, Suarez married her then-girlfriend, Grazi Chiosque, 29, an American citizen. The couple hoped to adjust Suarezโs immigration status and smooth the way for her to obtain a green card. They filed the required documents in May.
Before that request was processed, however, Suarez was swept up in a wave of detentions by ICE at courthouses targeting immigrants scheduled for hearings โ only to be arrested and shipped to detention centers despite their legal non-criminal status.
Suarez was now one of them.
Chiosque says her wife is enduring degrading and isolating conditions at the Adelanto ICE detention facility in Southern California, where sheโs been detained since September.
โThereโs mold in the food,โ Chiosque said. โYou donโt have any privacy.โ
โShe was put into shackles,โ Suarezโs wife added. โShe told me that crying because it really made her feel like she did something that was wrong, and she didnโt.โ
Far from expediting Suarezโs immigration status, the coupleโs decision to marry may have only complicated Suarezโs legal claim.
Earlier this month, she was scheduled for back-to-back appearances with government officials. The first was with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate her spousal petition. The second was before an immigration judge related to her detention and status in the country.
Chiosque flew from Pennsylvania to help Suarez through the process.
At the first appointment, a supervisor with Citizenship and Immigration Services told Chiosque, referring to her wife, โUSCIS does not have jurisdiction because sheโs detained.โ
โThe immigration judge would have to adjudicate on both,โ Chiosque was told.
But at that hearing, the explanation flipped, Chiosque said.
โโNo, I donโt have jurisdiction on the I-130,โ the judge told Suarez, referring to her spousal petition. โThereโs nothing I can do.โ
โIf USCIS does not want to give you an interview,โ he added, โcontact your congressman.โ
The couple had hoped their marriage claim would help expedite Suarezโs permanent residency. Now it was keeping her behind bars.
โUSCIS says itโs not them because sheโs detained. And the judge says itโs not them, itโs USCIS,โ Chiosque said.
Suarez was returned to detention. Her next immigration hearing is scheduled for January 28.
The coupleโs legal limbo is indicative of a broader, and intentional, pattern by ICE and the Trump administration, said รlvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
โThis administration is separating and trapping families like Xiomara and Grazielli in a Kafkaesque nightmare, with the clear intention of making life so unbearable that they abandon all hope,โ Huerta said. โItโs not only a policy failure, but also a betrayal of LGBTQ immigrant families who deserve dignity, safety, and the chance to thrive.โ
โIt feels like weโre begging,โ said Chiosque, whose wife sits in detention a continent away.
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May 14, 2024; New York, NY, USA; Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (center), and Vivek Ramaswamy (right) look on while former President Donald Trump speaks to the media alongside his lawyer Todd Blanche before his criminal trial at Manhattan criminal court at the New York State Supreme Court on May 14, 2024. Mandatory Credit: Justin Lane/Pool via USA TODAY NETWORK | Justin Lane/Pool via USA TODAY N
Yesterdayโs announcement from Donald Trumpโs Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows just why the 2026 midterms will matter so much, and why the 11 months of waiting to get there could be so disastrous. We need a Congress that will stand up and snatch back the purse strings as the Founding Fathers originally intended.
In the United States Constitution, Congress is granted the power of the purse: the right to decide how much to spend and on what. Also, importantly, it gets to decide when to remove funding. In the 70s, that was used to pull funding from the Vietnam War. That power does not belong with the Executive Branch, which the Constitution says must โtake Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.โ
Unfortunately, the Founders likely never imagined people like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) or Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who have been willing to roll over and allow Trump to usurp their power, in violation of the basic concepts behind the checks and balances built into the Constitution.
Congress is already working to block gender-affirming care. This week, the House of Representatives passed two gender-affirming care bans for minors,ย one from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeneย (R-GA) andย one from Rep. Dan Crenshawย (R-TX). Those bans are horrific, and we can only pray that the Senate will stop them, but they are at least going through some sort of democratic process.
The Trump administration has a way to move towards a gender-affirming care ban if that is in line with the will of the people and democracy. The HHS proposal doesnโt represent a ban; instead, itโs an end-run on democracy, hoping to conduct a scorched-earth funding pull that they should have no authority to do.
The HHS funding blocking proposal would pull all federal funding from any institution that conducts any gender-affirming care for trans people, even if patients pay for it without using federal funds. Hospitals will have to either comply with the HHS plans by ceasing gender-affirming care or risk losing all federal funding for all other treatments.ย Major hospital systems have already cut their programsย because of these sorts of threats.
Trans youth and their families would be left seeking institutions that only provide gender-affirming care and forgo all government funding, if such a place even exists. Additionally, theย removal of Medicaid coverage could see prices rise.
There will certainly be pushback against this plan, especially from cities and states that have marked themselves as trans sanctuaries. But those challenges will take time, and a small interruption in care or even just the threat of it does huge damage to trans youth. Denial of care has beenย linked to increased rates of depression and anxiety,ย and for those who have begun puberty, the physical changes that can happen in a short time can be extremely upsetting.
Trump keeps using threats of pulling federal funding to power his authoritarianism. That tactic is only working because Congress isnโt stopping him and saying, โNo, thatโs our job.โ When Nixon pulled federal funds as a way to end programs with the Environmental Protection Agency (a process called impoundment),ย Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which closed loopholes and ensured that the president couldnโt rule this way. The Supreme Court went on to rule in 1975 that the president did not have the power to overrule Congress by impounding funds.
Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University Law School, spoke with ABC News early in the Trump presidency, when he first started using this trick. โIf Congress says youโre spending that much money on the federal programs, thatโs how much is being spent. The president cannot stop it even temporarily,โย he said. โCongress passed this statue this very particular rules of what exactly the president has to do if he wants to not spend money on money Congress has spent. He can ask Congress to for a recission, but there is a 45-day clock and a bunch of procedures, none of which have been followed by Trump.โ
Congressโ move here wasnโt just granting itself new powers, but providing a safeguard to ensure that the power of the purse remained where the Constitution had put it. Republicans are quick to wheel out the Constitution and the will of the Founding Fathers, but all of that seems forgotten under Trump. Instead, Congress is leaving decisions to be drawn out in protracted judicial battles, which ultimately run the risk of landing in the Trump-packed Supreme Court.
All of those federal funding threats work well for Trump, as he and his administration can wave their hands and claim that theyโre standing by their promise to cut bloated government spending (all while spending millions in taxpayer money onย golfingย andย Kid Rock). But it all relies on a tactic that shouldnโt even be part of the presidential toolkit.
There might be a lot of justifiable hope in 2026 that things will work out.ย Elections this year have already shown a big swing away from Trumpโs party.ย Republicans are resigning, opening more seats that the party could lose between now and 2027. And while Congress might be voting on gender-affirming care bans themselves, it took a capitulation to a hardline anti-trans Republican as she was heading out the door to get that to happen.
But weโre only halfway to those midterms, and thereโs going to be a lot of pain if the current Congress canโt remember why theyโre there for another year.
Subscribe to theย LGBTQ Nation newsletterย and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
This is just hate and bigotry.ย It is a group of people who hate trans people for some unknown reason and have made their life / career the harassment of trans minors who play sports.ย ย I can not see how this harms this reporter and his group in any way.ย ย To make your life about harming others is a real petty way to exist.ย Many conservatives use their religion to justify such hate but the Jesus of the bible never said a word against the entire LGBTQ+ community.ย ย So their hate is internally driven and they must be such miserable people.ย ย So Sad.ย ย The drive to regress the world’s most progressive countries back to an uneducated straight cis white male controlled society is really causing a lot of damage to people and freedom to express your life as you wish.ย It seems driven by two groups, the older people who are uncomfortable with the progression of society and younger religious people driven by wealthy religious hate groups.ย ย Hugs
Since Sept. 5, right-wing sports publication OutKick has published 19 articles about a 12th grade girlsโ volleyball player at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The playerย caught the attentionย of reporter Dan Zaksheske after he obtained public documents that appear to show her requesting a legal name change from a traditionally masculine first name to a traditionally feminine one.
Over the next three months, Zaksheske would write 18 of the 19 articles OutKick would publish about this student. He and other OutKick reporters attended multiple high school girlsโ volleyball games where they recorded and reported on Skyline Highโs volleyball season. At the heart of each article was a focus on the girl, who Zaksheske refers to as a โtrans-identifying biological male.โ
Zaksheskeโs reporting stoked a controversy that drew the attention ofย multipleย right-wingย publications,ย politiciansย andย influencers. This coverage led Sean Lechner, whose cisgender daughter played against Skyline and allegedly shared a locker room with their team, toย fileย a Title IX complaint.
Lechnerโs daughter at a press conference about the complaint. Screenshot viaย Fox Business.
While the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) doesย requireย trans athletes to get a waiver approved to compete in official state tournaments, the Democrat-majority state Senateย outright rejectedย the idea of a trans athlete sports ban earlier this year. In addition, LGBTQ Michiganders haveย strong anti-discrimination protectionsย under the stateโs Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
In theย complaint, Lechner calls for a ban on โbiological males from competing in female sportsโ and for a โfull investigation into actions and communications of Ann Arbor Public Schools/Monroe High/Chet Hesson,โ citing a Trumpย executive orderย that declares that trans-inclusive policies are in violation of Title IX.
Shortly after the complaint was filed, Uncloseted Media published an interview clip with Hesson, the athletic director of Monroe Public Schools, in which he simply said his โheart goes outโ to the player for being under such scrutiny. Less than 24 hours later, he was put onย administrative leave.
As this story spreads like wildfire, experts in journalistic ethics are raising concerns about Zaksheskeโs reporting.
โOutKickโs inflammatory reporting on a Michigan high school volleyball player who may or may not be trans disregards several core principles of the Society of Professional Journalistsโ [SPJ] Code of Ethics,โ Dan Axelrod, chairman of the SPJโs ethics committee, told Uncloseted Media.ย SPJโs Code of Ethics, originally drafted in 1973, has been embraced and used by thousands of journalists from numerous newsrooms and schools.
โThe Code cautions reporters to โshow compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage,โ and to โuse heightened sensitivity when dealing with juveniles,โ while โweigh[ing] the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information,โโ Axelrod says. โ[OutKick] has essentially ignored all those ethical principles, given [Zaksheskeโs] relentless coverage of the player, which has led the public to easily infer who she is, and its negative framing of her story.โ
The player, whose mother did not respond to an interview request, does not appear to have publicly come out as trans prior to the publication of Zaksheskeโs first article.
Chad Painter, associate professor and chair of the communications department at the University of Dayton, says this โbrings up a whole host of issues.โ While Zaksheske wrote that he did not name the girl โbecause the student athlete is under 18,โ Painter says that doesnโt do enough to conceal her identity.
In his reporting, Zaksheske references the existence of publicly accessible name change documents, the girlโs county of residence and the name of a local volleyball club sheโd been a part of. โSomeone who is reasonably well-versed in being able to Google someone can figure this out pretty easily,โ Painter, who has co-authored multiple media ethics textbooks, told Uncloseted Media.
โThereโs longstanding norms in newsrooms that we donโt out people, that that is a very personal decision that an individual gets to make, and unless there is a massively compelling reason to do that, itโs not our role,โ he says. โThe idea that he is in the clear because he didnโt specifically write this personโs name in a story, it wouldnโt hold up to journalistic scrutiny.โ
And Zaksheskeโs reporting appears to have outed the girl. The same day that he published his first article on the matter, an X account whose mission is โto call out these male athletes and expose the damage that they have each caused to women and girls in sportsโ published the girlโs full name and deadname along with multiple photos and videos of her. (Uncloseted Media has chosen not to link to these posts directly in the interest of her privacy.)
In addition to the 18 articles Zaksheske wrote, he also tweeted about the situation at least 41 times andย attendedย atย leastย fourย high school girlsโ volleyball games. While watching, he recorded videos of the girls playing and then posted them to X and OutKickโs website.
โHaving 19 stories about one athlete โฆ to me, that seems like this coverage is out of line with how weโd normally talk about, especially high school sports, which, frankly, no one outside of this little area in Michigan are going to really care about,โ says Painter.
โOutside of the culture war stuff, I donโt see where this is a story.โ
When Zaksheske was confronted by multiple people at the school about attending and recording one of the games, he publishedย another articleย accusing them of harassment. โI was shadowed by the school principal and harassed and stalked by Skyline supporters,โ he wrote.
Painter notes that while Zaksheske was within his rights as a journalist and citizen to be attending and recording such events, he understands why the school would approach him with skepticism.
โI have a feeling that if I just started showing up randomly to high school volleyball games and taking photos and videos, there would probably be questions,โ Painter says. โBecause, again, we are talking about minors.โ
โThe reporter has a right to pursue news โฆ and that right especially exists at a public school,โ says Axelrod. โHowever, one has to wonder at what point is the coverage just pandering to curiosity as opposed to serving a valid societal purpose in informing and facilitating larger discussions about real and valid questions regarding the participation of trans athletes in sports.โ
Misinformation and Animus
Zaksheske has pushed back against similar criticism on X,ย accusingย those who question the ethics of his reporting of being โin favor of sterilizing, mutilating and castrating childrenโ and characterizing his reporting as โexposing their heinous acts.โ
โI donโt see that as an ethical problem because it doesnโt even enter into the world of ethics,โ Painter says of Zaksheskeโs rhetoric. โIt is wrong factually and it doesnโt really have a place in what we do in terms of the journalism field.โ
Misleading rhetoric about trans health care is common throughout OutKickโs reporting. Zaksheske has writtenย severalย articles about gender-affirming care, whereย he has claimedย that puberty blockers โtake healthy children and sterilize them for life.โ
Puberty blockers have beenย FDA-approvedย for treating precocious puberty in cisgender children since 1993.ย Multipleย studiesย have found no evidence of them causing permanent infertility, andย gynecologistsย andย endocrinologistsย have said that they do not cause sterilization.
Much of Zaksheskeโs coverage of trans people has been negative. Of adult trans women, heย wroteย that โthat person might see himself as a woman, but we are under no obligation to โaffirmโ that.โ He alsoย wroteย that doctors who provide gender-affirming care โhave to answer to their consciences.โ
OutKick also generally misgenders trans women and girls, referring to them as โmales,โ โbiological malesโ or โtrans-identifying males,โ additionally using masculine pronouns to refer to them.
Painter notes that this goes against the โAssociated Press Stylebook,โ which he says โany newsroom worth its salt is going to follow.โ
โThe journalist and the news outlet squander their credibility covering these types of societal questions when they use language โฆ that fails to recognize and respect the underlying humanity of an entire group of people,โ he says.
In an email, Brian Karpas, OutKickโs director of media relations, told Uncloseted Media that the publication โstands by the thorough and responsible reporting of Dan Zaksheske and will continue to protect women from competing against biological males.โ
Beyond Michigan
OutKickโs extensive reporting of the Michigan volleyball player is reflective of the publicationโs increasingly conservative bent since it launched in 2011. In 2021, it was acquired by Fox Corporation. Since then, it has partnered with Fox News and has become home to numerous right-wing personalities known for anti-trans rhetoric. These include founder Clay Travis, whoย has saidย World Aquatics is โencouraging โฆsuper young kids to be transitionedโ; Tomi Lahren, whoย saidย that liberals โdonโt know what a woman isโ; andย Riley Gaines, whoย referred toย an eighth-grade trans girl as a โmediocre man.โ
This story in Michigan is not the first time OutKick and Zaksheske have hyperfocused on one trans girl. They were one of the first national publications toย reportย on California-based track and field athlete AB Hernandez, who later became the center of a feud between the Trump administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Since March, OutKick has published at least 24 articles about Hernandez, 10 of which were written by Zaksheske. They sent reporters to at leastย twoย gamesย to photograph Hernandez and other teenage players. Additionally, OutKick published 15 articles and attended at least four games covering the story of a trans softball player in Minnesota, whose presence on the team became aย key pointย of aย lawsuitย by the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group,ย Alliance Defending Freedom.
This massive amount of coverage is common for U.S. conservative media: Aย reportย published this year from Media Matters for America found that Fox News ran over 400 weekday segments mentioning trans athletes from Feb. 5 to June 6.
All of this has had an impact. While the Title IX investigation is still pending, Hesson, who was named in the complaint, told Uncloseted Media that he had been targeted with harassment and vitriol online.
Uncloseted Media on Instagram: “Last Friday, Uncloseted Media pโฆ
In the comments of the Instagram post, Hesson was attacked by numerous users: squaredbeach9 wrote, โStop normalizing these freaks. You donโt give a bulimic chick a bucket and some gum.โ
And others chimed in, saying:
โGuaranteed he has child pron on an electronic device.โ
โFuck off, poor tranny hates attention, give me a fn break.โ
โSo a male playing in womenโs sports. And this cuck is defending it.โ
All of this has come even though Hesson is not directly affiliated with Skyline High School, which is part of a different district. As such, he was not involved in the decision to allow the girl to play, and he was also not privy to whether she had a waiver.
In addition, numerous right-wing lawmakers and candidates have endorsed Lechnerโs complaint. Republican state Rep. James DeSana posted aย statementย to Facebook โcalling for Chet Hesson to be removed immediately.โ
โThe public cannot have good discourse, debate, or dialogue without good information,โ Painter says. โSupplying that information is the fundamental duty of the news media. When journalists are distracted by inconsequential stories, then weโre not spending the time to cover interesting and important news that our readers really need.โ
Both Painter and Axelrod took note of the small number of known trans athletes in the U.S. Last year, the NCAAโs presidentย toldย a Senate panel that fewer than 10 of the 510,000 college athletes affiliated with the organization were transgender.
โThis controversy is part of a much larger national narrative about transgender athletes and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole,โ Painter says. โThe entire national conversation is based on virtually nothing, so this particular set of stories are based on an inconsequential premise.โ
Going Forward
If the Department of Education does find that Title IX was violated, the school district could risk losing federal funding if it continues to allow trans athletes to compete.
Zaksheske has been pressuring the MHSAA to confirm whether a waiver was approved for the volleyball player to compete, citing a statement from early September in which the association said it had not yet approved any waivers for the semester. On Dec. 9, MHSAAย confirmedย that one waiver was granted in the fall season, though no details were given in the interest of the studentโs privacy.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, numerous experts and athletesย sayย that politicized vitriol, misleading information and outsized media attention about trans athletes makes girlsโ sports less safe for all athletes.
โThere are real, valid, and necessary societal discussions to be had about trans athletes participating against competitors who donโt match their birth gender, and ethical journalism can have a place in informing those discussions,โ Axelrod says. โAt the end of the day, this woman is still a human, and a child at that, not a canvas for OutKick to paint a distorted picture of one individual whoโs a tiny part of a much bigger societal dialogue about trans athletes.โ
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
Can’t air anything that might upset the dear cult leader right?ย ย All broadcast corporate media must please the dictator to make a profit, or pay the dictator tribute.ย What a waste.ย Again if a democrat had tried this republicans would have howled every few minutes on their paid media arms of their party.ย Not a peep out of the democratic party about it?ย Hugs
60 Minutesย postponed a segment on the maximum security prison in El Salvador that Presidentย Donald Trumpย sent suspected gangsters and illegal immigrants to, only a few hours before the report was set to air on Sunday.
The CBS program had been planning to air the segment titled โInside CECOT,โ referring to El Salvadorโs Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo.
Here is the brief editorโs note thatย 60 Minutesย posted to X about the report getting bumped:
โThe broadcast lineup for tonightโs edition ofย 60 Minutesย has been updated. Our report โInside CECOTโ will air in a future broadcast.โ
The CBS News website also yanked its teaser clip of the report down from its website. Here is what that page looks like now:
A CBS News spokespersonย toldย Puckย reporterย Dylan Byersย that its editorial team โdetermined it needed additional reporting.โ
The segment was being reported by correspondentย Sharyn Alfonsiย and produced byย Oriana Zill de Granados.
Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, shared the following teaser for the report on Friday:
Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvadorโs harshest prisons.
It added Alfonsi would be speaking to โsome of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured inside CECOT.โ
CECOT has been described by outlets like ABC News asย a โmega-prison.โย It opened in 2023 as part of Salvadoran Presidentย Nayib Bukeleโsย push to arrest and imprison more gang members.ย Inmates tauntedย a handful of Democratic and Republican lawmakers when they toured CECOT in May.
Is tRump a controlled asset or just a useful old idiot, does it matter.ย ย He is giving Putin everything he every wanted.ย The fact is he has decided to be Putin in the west while he lets Russia and China divide up Europe and the Asia.ย ย Hugs
The White House in Washington DC, USA. Illustrative image via Wikimedia Commons.
The United States has removed sanctions from several foreign companies previously accused of supplying equipment to Russia, including items linked to its defense and military-industrial sectors.
The changes were published on the US Treasury Departmentโsย websiteย on December 18, without any explanation for the move.
Cyprus-based investment firm and its owner delisted
Among the firms removed is Cyprus-based Veles International Limited and its owner, Dmytro Buhaienko. While the company is tied to an investment group based in Moscow, US sanctions remain in place against its Russian legal entities.
Veles was originally sanctioned in 2023 for operating in Russia’s financial sector and working with wealthy Russian private individuals.
Dubai and Turkish firms linked to military exports also dropped
Other companies taken off the sanctions list include Dubai-based 365 Days Freight Services FZCO and Tรผrkiye’s Etasis, both of which had been linked to exports of restricted equipment used for military purposes in Russia.
When 365 Days was originally sanctioned in November 2023, the Treasuryย saidย the company “specializes in moving high-value goods and computer components” and “has shipped high-priority goods, including machines for the reception, conversion, and transmission of data, to Russia.”
Finnish supplier of optoelectronic equipment removed
The Treasury also lifted restrictions on Finland’s Hi-Tech Koneisto and its director, Yevheniia Dremova. The company had supplied optoelectronic and laboratory equipment to Russian firms already under sanctions.
CPS Proses Kontrol Urunleri, a Turkish company, had previously been sanctioned for sending German- and US-made machine tools to a Russian defense contractor. While the company itself is no longer under US sanctions, the Russian contractor it supplied remains restricted.
US authorities did not indicate whether the removals reflect changes in compliance, enforcement priorities, or broader sanctions policy toward Russia.
The delistings come as White House negotiators have met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to push a US deal to end the war in Ukraine, and days after the Treasury extended authorization for Lukoil-branded gas stations outside Russia to continue operating.
Commentary: The masking of ICE agents is indefensible
Amy Dru Stanley and Craig Becker, Chicago Tribuneย onย Published inย Op Eds
Last month, a federal judge observed that masked figures were creating terror on American streets โ not criminals but agents of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. โLaw enforcement in the United States has usually been performed in the open,โ wrote Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
โImages of plain-clothed, masked federal agents โ faceless agents of the federal government โ snatching a non-violent person off the streetsโ have created โfear in citizens and non-citizens alike.โ
Weโve all seen the arrests in our neighborhoods and felt that fear. Weโve watched the raids unfold on the news: on the streets, on college campuses, in workplaces, in homes, outside courtrooms, in Home Depot parking lots. ICE agents wearing masks, violently detaining people, holding them captive, disappearing the suspects.
And weโve heard the explanation that masking protects the ICE agents. โIf you expose them,โ President Donald Trump has said, โyou put them in great danger, tremendous danger.โ
But that rationale is indefensible, as it would apply to every public official and employee involved in the criminal justice system, all of whom face the threat of retaliatory violence. Moreover, severe penalties exist for attacking or intimidating law enforcement officers. Surely a judge who sentences convicted criminals to prison is as much at risk as ICE agents, yet the notion is absurd that judges should be anonymous or allowed to mask their faces in the courtroom.
Anti-masking bills have been introduced in Congress โ including the โNo Secret Police Actโ and โNo Anonymity in Immigration Enforcement Actโโ but the measures have no chance of enactment under GOP control. Recently, Chicago and California banned masked arrests, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has stated: โWe will NOT comply.โ
What is needed is for the courts to act โ to declare masked arrests unconstitutional, as unreasonable seizures barred by the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that โreasonableness depends on not only when a seizure is made, but also how it is carried out.โ Guarantees exist against seizures without probable cause or warrants, and the court has found that law enforcement agents violate the Fourth Amendment if they seize someone with unreasonable force or execute a warrant to search someoneโs home without first knocking and announcing their presence. Such protections, essential in a democracy, should be extended to bar the carrying out of masked arrests. That ban is necessary to identify bad actors, and reduce the risk of harm and thereby uphold constitutional guarantees against unreasonable seizures and interference with freedom of expression.
ICE use of masks has spread more than fear. It has led to criminal impersonation: men pretending to be ICE agents carrying out kidnappings and sexual assaults. But threats to liberty and security lie in masked ICE policing itself โ that faceless agents will use excessive force on immigrants or retaliate against witnesses who protest their raids by exercising free speech rights, and that no redress for the wrongs can be sought because the ICE agents canโt be identified. That masked men can act with impunity, as in authoritarian regimes.
Aggressive recruitment of new ICE agents, who are deployed with little training, heightens the risks of the masked raids. As the crackdown spreads โ with the White House demanding 3,000 arrests by ICE a dayโ so, too, is protest against the masking. โMore raids means more unidentified federal law enforcement intimidating and in some cases terrorizing our communities,โ states the American Civil Liberties Union, noting the difficulty of distinguishing ICE arrests from kidnappings.
Masking also presents dangers for the ICE agents, who may be mistaken for imposters. Obscuring identity has long been a tactic used in certain undercover operations. But as former ICE official Scott Shuchart warned about the masked arrests, there is now โa kind of vigilante problem where people either donโt know, or at least arenโt sure, that these officers who are dressed up like bank robbers are actually law enforcement officers.โ In such circumstances, violent self-defense might result.
Judicial prohibition of masked arrests is supported by trends toward greater transparency in policing nationwide. โIn evaluating the reasonableness of police procedures under the Fourth Amendment,โ the Supreme Court has, by its own account, โlooked to prevailing rules in individual jurisdictions.โ ICE agentsโ masking is sharply discordant with rules requiring local police to wear badges and nameplates and barring them from preventing the public from reading the information. The increasing use of body-worn cameras similarly serves police accountability.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, assaults on ICE agents are up by more than 1,000% this year and masking has been informally tolerated to prevent doxxing, harassment and violence. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department has begun to prosecute people who follow agents or publicize their addresses. Yet ICE has issued no policy requiring mask use to protect agents โ nor any official guidelines on masking at all. Appearing on Fox News in July, the acting ICE director, Todd Lyons, equivocated. โIโm not a fan of the masks,โ he said. โI think we could do better, but we need to protect our agents and officers.โ
The unreasonableness of masked arrests is highlighted by state legislation outlawing the wearing of disguises by private individuals on public property. It reflects the understanding that masking promotes lawlessness โ and as the Supreme Court has recognized, โDecency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.โ
Currently, some 22 states have anti-masking rules on the books, as do many local governments, rules now being enforced to suppress peaceful dissent rather than criminal activity. In extreme instances, felony charges have been threatened against masked students protesting the war in Gaza. No doubt the repressive use of the restrictions will broaden. Last June, Trump posted on social media: โFrom now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???โ
Anti-masking rules governing private conduct are almost a century old, with most originating in efforts to quell the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan. With much to hide, the Klan has attacked anti-masking laws in the very terms now used by ICE to defend masked arrests: โMembers wear their masks to protect their anonymity,โ the Klan has argued, โbecause of the harassment, threats of violence, violence.โ
The depth of community protest against ICE agentsโ masking may well be rooted in historical memory of faceless Klansmen riding through the night, seizing their captives. As Judge Young warned recently, โMasks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.โ
We should not do so now.
____
Amy Dru Stanley is a history professor at the University of Chicago. Craig Becker is a lawyer with Democracy Defenders Fund.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents while filming a raid on his worksite, despite having a REAL ID on him and telling the officers he was a citizen.
Reporting Highlights
Americans Detained:ย The government doesnโt track how many citizens are held by immigration agents. We found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests.
Held Incommunicado:ย More than 20 citizens have reported being held for over a day without being able to call their loved ones or a lawyer. In some cases their families couldnโt find them.
Cases Wilted:ย Agents have arrested about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, for allegedly interfering with or assaulting officers, yet those cases were often dropped.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldnโt be concerned.
โIf the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,โย Kavanaugh wrote, โthey promptly let the individual go.โ
About two dozen Americans have said they were held forย more than a dayย without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The governmentย does not track how oftenย immigration agents hold Americans.
So ProPublica created its own count.
We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trumpโs second administration.
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the familyโs attorney untilย a congresswoman intervened.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents canย hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.
Immigration agents alsoย can arrest citizensย who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agentsย pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punchedย a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agentsย knocked over and then tackledย a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasnโt given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described beingย held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court hasย ruledย that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
George Retes, an American combat veteran, at the site of his arrest by immigration agents on Californiaโs Central Coast. Retes was detained for three days without access to a lawyer and missed his daughterโs third birthday.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. โWe donโt arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,โ wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someoneโs looks. โHow do they look compared to, say, you?โ Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovinoย said to a white reporterย in Chicago.
The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. โInterfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,โ said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. โOfficers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.โ
A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.
An immigration raid on 79-year-old Rafie Ollah Shouhedโs car wash left him with broken ribs.ย Courtesy of Rafie Ollah Shouhed. Compiled by ProPublica.
Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignoredย recommendationsย for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has aย history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trumpโs first term.
We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, likeย throwing rocksย or tossingย a flare to start a fire.
Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something thatย it hasnโt for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.
In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. โThe new idea is to use those resources unintelligentlyโ โ with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.
When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recentlyย analyzed how sweeps in Los Angelesย have led to racial profiling. โIf the government can grab someone because heโs a certain demographic group thatโs correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.โ
Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. โAny one of us could be next.โ
The video Garcia Venegas made of an immigration raid on a construction site shows him walking away from the officer while trying to film and then stating that heโs a citizen before being detained.ย Courtesy of Garcia Venega
When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Courtโs three liberal justices strongly dissented.ย They warned that citizens risked beingย โgrabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.โ
Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a โNo trespassingโ sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.
Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-oldโs arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, โIโm a citizen!โ
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas told agents he was a citizen both times he was detained. His REAL ID was dismissed as a fake.
Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.
This time, agents didnโt tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.
DHS did not respond to ProPublicaโs questions about Garcia Venegasโ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency hasย previously defendedย the agentsโ conduct, saying he โphysically got in between agents and the subjectโ during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.
Garcia Venegasโ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.
Kavanaughโs assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. Heโs a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.
โIf they decide they want to detain you,โ he said. โYouโre not going to get out of it.โ
Men building a home in rural Baldwin County, Alabama. Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents twice while working on homes in the area.
George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.
The only clue Retesโ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that โICEโ had arrested him during aย massive raid and protestย on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.
Still, Retesโ family couldnโt find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.
Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as heโs caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retesโ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man โ Retes โ splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.
George Retesโ family noticed his car in a compiled video posted to TikTok. This clip from that longer video shows his white vehicle surrounded by tear gas. Immigration agents later pinned him on the ground.ย nota.sra/TikTok
Retesโ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldnโt find their loved ones.
โThey broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,โย his sister told a reporterย between sobs. โWe donโt know what to do. Weโre just asking to let my brother go. He didnโt do anything wrong. Heโs a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.โ
Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands. He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.
Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. โThey didnโt care.โ He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldnโt have come to work that day. โThey still sent me away to jail.โ He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was โwrong completely.โ
DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X afterย Retes wrote an op-edย last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. Anย agency postย asserted he was arrested for assault after he โbecame violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.โ Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.
Retes said that agents knew he was a citizen. โThey didnโt care.โ
The Department of Justice has encouraged agents to arrest anyone interfering with immigration operations,ย twiceย orderingย law enforcement to prioritize cases of those suspected of obstructing, interfering with or assaulting immigration officials.
But the governmentโs claims in those cases have often not beenย borne out.
Daniel Montenegro was filming a raid at a Van Nuys, California, Home Depot with other day-laborer advocates this summer when, he told ProPublica, he was tackled by several officers who injured his back.
Bovino, the Border Patrol chief whoย oversaw the LA raidsย and has since taken similar operations to cities likeย Sacramentoย and Chicago,ย tweeted out the names and photosย of Montenegro and three others, accusing them of using homemade tire spikes to disable vehicles.
โI had no idea where that story came from,โ Montenegro told ProPublica. โI didnโt find out until we were released. People were like, โWe saw you on Twitter and the news and you guys are terrorists, you were planning to slash tires.โ I never saw those spike tire-popper things.โ
Officials have not charged Montenegro or the others with any crimes. (Bovino did not respond to a request for comment, while DHS defended him in a statement to ProPublica: โChief Bovinoโs success in getting the worst of the worst out of the country speaks for itself.โ)
The governmentโs cases are sometimes so muddied that itโs unclear why agents actually arrested a citizen.
Andrea Velez was charged with assaulting an officer after she was accidentally dropped off for work during a raid on street vendors in downtown Los Angeles. She said in a federal complaint that officers repeatedly assumed she did not speak English. Federal officers later requested access to her phone in an attempt to prove she was colluding withย another citizen arrested that day, who was charged withย assault. She was one of the Americans held for more than two days.
DHS did not respond to our questions about Velez, but it has previously accused her of assaulting an officer. A federal judge has dismissed the charges.
Other citizens also said officers accused them of crimes and suddenly questioned their citizenship โ including a man arrested afterย filming Border Patrol agentsย breakย a truck window, and a pregnant womanย who tried to stop officersย from taking her boyfriend.
The prospects for any significant reckoning over agentsโ conduct, even against citizens, are dim. The paths for suing federal agents are even more limited than they are for local police. And thatโs if agents can even be identified. Whatโs more, theย administration has gutted the office that investigates allegations of abuse by agents.
โThe often-inadequate guardrails that we have for state and local government โ even those guardrails are nonexistent when youโre talking about federal overreach,โ said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law.
More than 50 members of Congress have also written to the administration, demanding details about Americans whoโve been detained. One is Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat. After trying to question Noem about detained citizens, federal agents grabbed Padilla,ย pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The department later defended the agents, saying they โacted appropriately.โ
I can’t understand living just to hate and harm others who are not doing anything that harms you.ย ย To carry that bitterness and to work so hard to deny to others what you demand for yourself seems like poisoning one’s self.ย With so much to enjoy in diversity and inclusion why work so hard to create a homogeny of everyone being the same.ย ย Hugs
As the M4L annual summit kicks off this weekend, hereโs how one of the groupโs original chapters is sowing chaos and pushing anti-LGBTQ policies in Indian River County.
Mink Tyner says some people call her a โhelicopter parentโ because of how protective she is over her kids. Despite this, she wasnโt concerned about bringing her daughter, then 14, to the Indian River County, Florida, school boardย meetingย in August 2023, where they were discussing changes to the stateโs curriculum relating to race and slavery.
Thatโs why she was shocked when she saw community members at the podium reading excerpts of sexual content from books.
โI hate lights out now because my D has a mind of its own,โ one woman read. Then a man came up and read, โWhen Doris had just turned 11, her current stepfather started having sex with her.โ And a third person read, โHe took a long long time peeling off my jeans and T-shirt, pink bra and panties, and a longer time stroking and kissing me.โ
The meeting had turned into more of a stunt led by protestors affiliated with the local chapter of Moms for Liberty (M4L), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designatedย far-right extremist group.
โIโm not gonna have my kid in here listening to these adults doing this shit,โ Tyner remembers thinking.
She took her daughter out of the room and pleaded with security to intervene, but they refused. So she spoke up to disrupt the meeting herself, only for security from the Sheriffโs officeโwho told Uncloseted Media their deputies responded โappropriately and in accordance with established proceduresโโto escort her out.
As she was leaving, conservative pastor John Amanchukwu, who had attended the meeting with M4L, confronted her while recording a video that he would later post toย Xย calling her โdemonicโ and lashing out about her being pro-LGBTQ: โYouโre okay with DEI. โฆ Youโre okay with Pride Month. Youโre okay with the rainbow flag. Youโre okay with all that junk,โ he yelled. Tyner responded by calling him a โfucking weirdoโ and walked out.
That video opened a floodgate of harassment that tormented Tyner and her family for years: She received insults, accusations of pedophilia, and persistent threats of violence from a Facebook account displaying the name CURTIS COUSINS who called her a โfent-using fat fucking dykeโ and told her she deserved to have โa potato peeler peel her clit right off to the bone.โ
โI never know if this week or 10 years from now somebodyโs gonna show up [to my business] based on some kind of misinformation that Moms for Liberty started about me [or] want to harm me and my family,โ Tyner, who owns a tattoo shop, told Uncloseted Media.
Indian River County is home to one of the first of M4Lโsย 320ย chapters nationwide. The groupโs annual summit is this weekend and will featureย a variety of politiciansย with anti-LGBTQ track records, including Oklahomaโs former state superintendent Ryan Walters, who made headlines for makingย anti-trans commentsย after the death of 16-year-old trans teen Nex Benedict. Last year, conservative heavyweights spoke at the event, including President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
Over the last four years, M4L have built a reputation for chaos and controversy. Members have made the news forย quotingย Hitler,ย strippingย at a school board meeting andย offering bountiesย to report teachers who teach about โcritical race theory.โ
At one point in Indian River County, close allies of M4Lย made up a majorityย of the school board where they pressured the district toย banย scores of books, many of which contain LGBTQ themes, andย reverseย a racial equity policyโall while harassing, doxing and defaming their adversaries.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science from the University of Massachusetts, says whatโs playing out in Indian River County is a microcosm for so many other chapters across the country.
โ[The media are] falling like suckers for this story that theyโre a grassroots moms organization. They are not, they are connected to โฆ the far right establishment,โ he says. โAnd thatโs become โฆ more and more apparent. So this whole grassroots thing is hogwash.โ
Beginnings
Moms for Liberty wasย foundedย in Florida in 2021 by three current and former school board members: Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler, the latter of whom has since left the group after being involved in aย sex scandalย wherein her husband allegedly prowled local bars to solicit women for threesomes.
Shortly after M4L launched, Justice tapped Jennifer Pippin, who had made a name for herself for leading activism against COVID-19 restrictions, to lead the chapter for her home county, Indian River.
While the anti-mask circles that would later be folded into M4L always had a conservative lean, multiple county residents told Uncloseted Media that the groupโs discriminatory views were not initially apparent.
Tyner, a lesbian who identifies as politically independent, actually felt welcomed by the group when she worked with them on their anti-mask mandate advocacy. However, that changed as M4Lโs focus turned towards opposing LGBTQ inclusion measures in schools.
โOnce they organized and got the appearance of a grassroots start โฆ and many people in the community that were siding with them, itโs like they took the steering wheel and they just steered another direction,โ she says.
When Tyner began speaking up against this rhetoric, she says she was blocked from the groupโs Facebook pages. But as she continued to oppose them publicly, Justice offered to meet with her to address her concerns.
Over breakfast at a local cafe, Tyner says Justice gave her a โscriptedโ response in the hopes of winning back her support. She even invited Tyner to an M4L chapter meeting. However, Tyner declined as the meeting was allegedly to be hosted by a community member who had made an online post suggesting necrophilia and pedophilia are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.
โI was like, โAlright, this is not a good or a safe movement,โ says Tyner.
Justice did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Pippin told Uncloseted Media that M4L have โmembers and members children that are LGB in [their] chapter and across the country.โ
Another local parent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about his job security, says while heโd initially been on board with M4Lโs parental rights advocacy, he ran into conflict with the group when they startedย opposingย the school districtโs racial equity policies and tried to ban books with antiracist themes, including Ibram X. Kendiโs โAntiracist Babyโย and โStamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.โ Like Tyner, he says he was approached by Justice and Pippin to win him over again but was ultimately unconvinced.
After he split from M4L, he began publicly criticizing the groupโs book bans. In retaliation, some M4L members accused him of supporting pedophiles.
When he reached out to Pippin to ask for the people making such accusations against him to be held accountable, he says she waved him offโall while blocking him on social media and accusing him of โbullying.โ He also says that she doxed him after another disputeโa major factor in his decision to remain anonymous.
โHer response to me basically was โfree speech,โ โwe donโt control what our members say.โ And Iโm like, โBut Jennifer, you know me, and you know Iโm not a pedophile, and this is unacceptable,โโ he told Uncloseted Media.
Building Political Power
The Indian River County School Districtโs J.A. Thompson Administrative Center. Photo byย Kiran891.
Efforts to ban LGBTQ and racial justice-related books in schools are part of M4Lโs national ammo that helped themย quickly explodeย in popularity.
Cunningham says M4L wereย boostedย by high-profile connections on the right. Ziegler and Descovich both served asย presidentsย of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, a groupย billedย as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Board Association. Zieglerโs husband, Christian, was vice chairman of Floridaโs Republican Party at the time and worked as aย media surrogateย for the Trump campaign in 2016.
Since their launch, M4L have had their conferences and events sponsored by theย Heritage Foundationย and theย Leadership Institute; were directlyย advisedย by Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell; and were a part of Project 2025โsย advisory board. And this summer, Justice wasย hiredย as executive vice president of Heritage Action.
In 2022, the Indian River County chapter leveraged this influence to carve out power in local government: They got two close allies,ย Jacqueline Rosario and Dr. Gene Posca,ย electedย to the school board, and they developedย closeย relationshipsย with the Ron DeSantis-backedย countyย sheriff Eric Flowers. Pippin was evenย appointedย by Floridaโs Department of Education to a statewide workgroup to develop compliance training for Floridaโs classroom censorship policies, including the infamous โDonโt Say Gayโ law.
As M4L became notorious for pushing exclusionary measures in schools, some officialsโincluding school board member Peggy Jonesโcriticized the group. In retaliation, Jones reportedly received so many death threats that the district had toย increase security detailย at all school events where she was present.
In the midst of increasing chaos surrounding M4L, the group mounted a campaign ofย hundredsย of requests to ban books containing โsexual content.โ
While some librarians continued to hold the majority of books where bans were unsuccessful, M4Lย convincedย Flowers to investigate one school library, alleging that keeping the books on the shelf could constitute a sex crime. While the investigation found that no crime had been committed, Flowers concluded that โwe do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children,โ putting even further pressure on local librarians.
Pippin at the school board meeting in August 2023. Photo via YouTube.
This kind of direct action proved very effective. Even the reading protest where Tyner was escorted out won themย 34 additional book bansย from a unanimous board vote.
โYou canโt deny that the kind of tactics that they have have been useful,โ Cunningham says. โSome of the places theyโve taken over, [including] Sarasota County, where Bridget Ziegler was on the board, became much more conservative over the past few years.โ
Silencing Opposition
In addition to school board meetings, the group has a track record of trolling progressive events. Tyner and the anonymous parent remember anย incidentย where a group of M4L members showed up to a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting that had been organized to discuss plans for opposition against new stateย regulationsย that required classes to portray slavery in a more positive light.Tyner says white M4L members attempted to shout down NAACP speakers, with one member allegedly using the n-word. Thomas Kenny, a M4L member who was at the event, said this โdid not happenโ and that one of their members using the n-word is โan absolute lie.โ
Cunningham says these disruptions are part of M4Lโs playbook. He pointed to the example of Jennifer Jenkins, the liberal school board member who unseated Tina Descovich in neighboring Brevard County, whoย saysย protestors spurred by M4L have turned up outside her home calling her a pedophile and burning โFUโ in her lawn.
โThey [use the] same kind of tactics โฆ over and over again,โ says Cunningham.
Pippin
Chapter leader Jennifer Pippin has mastered those tactics, becoming widely known as one of the most influentialย book bannersย in the country. Sheโs also madeย headlinesย for filing a complaint against the Kilted Mermaid, a Vero Beach wine bar, alleging that they had hosted an all-ages drag event with sexual content, which the bar owner denies. M4L rallied against the bar online,ย spammingย theย postsย of one of the barโsย dragย performers,ย tellingย the queen to โstay away from children.โ This stunt caught the attention of Floridaโs Attorney General James Uthmeier, whoย launchedย an investigation and issued subpoenas for video recordings of the bar on the day of the event as well as identifying documents for employees and performers.
Pippin has alsoย claimed to be a nurse, despite no public records showing that she has a license, andย appearedย on the antisemitic and homophobic far-right news website TruNews, where sheย claimed, without evidence, that anti-M4L activists have been killing pets and livestock owned by the groupโs members.
Fear
Tyner and the other anonymous parent both say that theyโve had to take a step back from the school board and local activism because of the toxic environment M4L have created.
โItโs been turned into such a circus,โ Tyner says.
In the meantime, things have gottenย worseย for the LGBTQ community in Indian River County, and in Florida overall, between the โDonโt Say Gayโ law and anti-LGBTQ legislation thatย requiresย teachers to deadname trans students unless they have signed parental permission slips. The anonymous parent says heโs watched many of the LGBTQ people in his life, including one of his own children, who is a teacher, leave the state due to the hostile environment.
โItโs not safe for a lot of people,โ he says.
Greener Pastures?
Despite all of this, a sea change may be on the horizon. A 2024ย Brookings reportย found that the success rates of M4L-endorsed candidates were on the decline, and in Indian River Countyโs elections last year, both of M4Lโs school board candidatesย lost. With the continued controversies of the Trump administration and the growing popularity of groups that oppose M4Lโs ideology, Cunningham feels the tide may be turning for M4Lโs influence in Indian River County and across America.
โIn school board races, the Moms for Liberty label is toxic, so try to not get attached to that,โ he says. โTheyโve had quite an impact โฆ I donโt wanna downplay that. But in terms of popular appeal and growth, I think itโs much more limited than it is portrayed.โ
Editorโs Note: In an email, Jennifer Pippin responded to the allegations made about her in this story. You can read themย here.
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Steve Bannon, former advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives for a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court on February 11, 2025 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Withย Republicansย andย Democratsย embroiled in a fight over redistricting around the country, GOP operatives are beginning to openly discuss their plan to leverage institutional power โ from statehouses to the Supreme Court โ to usher in a near-unbreakable House majority.
Inย Texas, Republicans are pushing forward a plan to create five new GOP House seats, which alone could be enough to prevent Democrats from retaking the House in the 2026 midterms. The new Texas maps are part of a largerย redistrictingย play, in which Republicans think they can squeeze out a dozen new GOP seats from states such as Texas, Florida, Missouri and Indiana.
Theย redistrictingย play from Republicans, however, is only part of a larger campaign to totally change the state of play in the House of Representatives. If successful, that effort could see Republicans pick up more than 40 seats without having to win any more support from voters, according to GOP operatives.
GOP strategist Alex deGrasse, an advisor to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., spoke about the emerging plan on Steve Bannonโs โWar Room,โ outlining three changes that Republicans are counting on to bail them out of potential democratic accountability: partisan gerrymandering; a Supreme Court ruling that guts the Voting Rights Act; and an unprecedented andย unconstitutionalย mid-decade Census.
โYouโve got these three vectors,โ deGrasse said. โBack of the envelope map this morning โ when I woke up with a smile โ was Democrats could lose 42 seats.โ
Potentially the most important part of this plan hangs on the fate ofย Section Twoย of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This section of the landmark civil rights law generally bans race-based discrimination in voting laws, and has been an important part of the legal framework that currently guarantees House districts where the majority of the voters are a minority group. This then allows members of that minority group the ability to elect their chosenย representative.
The case before the court directly concerns one of Louisianaโs two majority-Black districts, with the group of voters who brought the case seeking to overturn the current map used in the state. Republicans, however, are hoping the Supreme Court will issue a maximalist ruling that would allow their party to dilute minority voters in the South, effectively eliminating Black representation in Congress in swaths of the country. This would also, in effect, eliminate many Democratic seats across the South.
The Republican dominated Supreme Court has steadily dismantled the Voting Rights Act in recent decades, with Shelby County v. Holder in 2013ย allowingย some states, mostly concentrated in the South, to change the rules and procedures around voting without a federal review.
The potential gains for Republicans here are huge. In 2024, there were 141 majority-minority House districts;119 of these districts elected Democrats to represent them.
The specific number of seats that Republicans would be able to pick up through a change in the Voting Rights Act would depend on the specifics of the ruling, as well as practical constraints on the GOPโs ability to gerrymander. Still,itโs clear Republicans are hoping to be given a free hand to eliminate majority-minority districts altogether.
โThe other third aspect that weโre talking about here, Steve, is that voting rights are up in the Supreme Court; they said, โHold on, do we need race-based seats? Does this go against the 14th and 15th Amendments? And does the Constitution supersede racial seat drawing?โ deGrasseย said.
The third part of the GOP plan, alongside the current round of redistricting and their hopes at the high court, has to do with President Donald Trumpโs ordering of a new mid-decade Census.
Stephen Miller, Trumpโs White House deputy chief of staff, signaled at the purpose of Trumpโs mid-decade Census plan when heย claimedย on Fox News that โDemocrats rigged the 2020 Census by including illegal aliens.โ Miller made these claims despite the fact that Trump was president and in charge of the 2020 Census.
For context, non-citizens have been counted in every Census since 1790, and the framers of the Constitution explicitly included non-citizens in the Census by stating in Article One that itย shallย count the โwhole number of persons in each state.โ For the 2020 Census, Trump also pushed to have a question about citizenship included in the Census, acknowledging that the Census was meant to count all persons in the United States, including noncitizens.
Miller went on to reveal the goal of Trumpโs mid-decade Census plan, saying that โ20 to 30 House Democrat seats wouldnโt exist but for illegal aliens.โ
Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who maintains aย personalย line of communication with Trump, indicated in anย interviewย with the Daily Caller that the Census scheme would also help to lock Democrats out of the presidency and โpotentially subtract 20 electoral votes from Democrats in the electoral college system, as congressional seat appropriation is directly correlated with Electoral College totals.โ Kirk is a co-founder of Turning Point USA, an organization dedicated to indoctrinating high school and college-age students in conservative ideology. The organization was also among the groups Trumpโs 2024 campaign delegated get-out-the-vote efforts to.
The GOPโs Census plan will almost certainly be challenged in court. Federal lawย holdsย that a mid-decade Census can be conducted, but not used for apportionment. And, since the countryโs founding, the U.S. has conducted a Census once a decade for the purposes of apportionment.
Democrats in Texas say that this current push from the Republicans โ to totally reconfigure American elections to retain power โ should be a wake-up call.
Texas state Rep. Venton Jones, the House minority whip in Texas, told Salon that national Democrats need to realize that โthereโs a bigger plan at play and we need to wake up and address that as a nation.โ
โWe have to continue to overperform to at least get back the majority and be ready for an electoral fight when that happens, because weโve already seen what happens when this president, or even this Congress, doesnโt get what they want,โ Jones said. โThey donโt always play by the rules. They just change the rules to make it benefit them.โ
Greg OwenDecember 21, 2025, 5:00 pm ESTShutterstock
Faefyx Collingtonย (They/Them)December 21, 2025, 4:41 pm ESTMay 14, 2024; New York, NY, USA; Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (center), and Vivek Ramaswamy (right) look on while former President Donald Trump speaks to the media alongside his lawyer Todd Blanche before his criminal trial at Manhattan criminal court at the New York State Supreme Court on May 14, 2024. Mandatory Credit: Justin Lane/Pool via USA TODAY NETWORK | Justin Lane/Pool via USA TODAY N
Scottie's Playtime 
