More than 4 million people nationwide were dropped from the federal food assistance program known as SNAP from July 2025 through March, according to a nonpartisan think tank.Arizona has seen the sharpest decline.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new initiative to test and treat troops for low testosterone has prompted a federal judge to question the differences between that kind of testosterone replacement therapy and hormone treatment for transgender men in the military.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington raised the question Wednesday in an ongoing lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops. Reyes noted that Trump’s ban says “the Armed Forces must adhere to high mental and physical health standards … without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions.”
Reyes ordered both parties in the lawsuit to address “the similarities and differences in administering TRT, both medically and logistically, for trans men compared to other service members, including cis individuals.” She was using the acronym for testosterone replacement therapy.
The judge also requested information on the Pentagon’s “basis for treating trans men and other service members differently between this new policy and the Military Ban.”
Reyes’ order comes a week after Hegseth announced that he is rolling out a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among troops, calling it necessary to allow them to operate at their “absolute best.”
The screenings will be conducted annually as part of service members’ required medical screenings for those 30 and older, he said. Troops under 30 can volunteer to be tested. In a video on social media, Hegseth said receiving testosterone replacement therapy would be voluntary.
Other Trump administration officials have begun to advocate for men to have easier access to testosterone replacement therapies, but the messaging from Hegseth and others blends known science on the hormone with broader, and less substantiated, claims.
Testosterone levels in men decline naturally with age and have long been linked to issues like erectile dysfunction, low libido, mood changes and weight gain. But experts have debated for years how to diagnose those problems and whether they should be treated by replacing the hormone.
Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is overseeing one of the lawsuits against Trump’s ban on transgender troops. Transgender active duty service members and former service members seeking to reenlist sued in late January 2025, shortly after the president returned for his second term in office.
Reyes ruled last year against Trump’s executive order to exclude transgender troops. A divided panel of federal appeals court judges sent the case back to Reyes after partially upholding her order, finding that the ban was unlawful and service members who sued could not be kicked out.
Reyes has since given the case class-action status, which means the outcome could expand to all service members.
Trump’s transgender military ban remains in effect, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Pentagon to enforce it as litigation plays out.
___
Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.
The House on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would codify President Trump’s executive order preventing transgender individuals from serving in the military.
The lower chamber voted 212-217 to reject the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). Four Republicans sided with Democrats to kill the measure.
The executive order, implemented by Trump in January, states that “consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order also states that the armed forces “shall neither allow males to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for females, nor allow females to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for males.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia voted 2-1 in June that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to expel people who are currently serving was motivated by animus against transgender people, violating their constitutional rights.
However, the court’s ruling did not cover people wishing to enlist in the military; the court ruled that it involved different considerations.
Republicans have spent years pushing policies targeting transgender Americans as a central part of their legislative agenda, arguing the measures are intended to protect women’s sports, parental rights and military readiness. Democrats have broadly opposed the efforts, arguing the measures discriminate against transgender people and infringe on their rights.
The NDAA is an annual, must-pass bill that establishes policies and authorizes appropriations for the Department of Defense’s military activities, military construction and the Department of Energy’s defense activities.
Three congressional Democrats say that as much as $21.5 million paid by ABC, Meta, Paramount and X to settle lawsuits brought by Trump is now missing or has been spent without explanation and requested a full accounting from the foundation building his presidential library.…
The BBC has issued 47 subpoenas to the elder Trump's inner circle, including Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller. But the Secret Service has blocked the BBC from serving Donald Trump Jr. with a subpoena seeking his Jan. 6 communications, according to a court filing Friday.
Trump: “I just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed, I do it every 6 months, and I requested another Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all — Got every question right. Few people in DC could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan”
Australian broadcaster on hot mic after Trump crashes Spain’s World Cup trophy presentation: “They’re gonna edit him out of that” pic.twitter.com/s2vIIw3cgE
New: Trump installed a Thomas Jefferson statue in the Rose Garden last week, continuing his statue spree, per ppl familiar.Three of the new Rose Garden statues were provided by HARLAN CROW, conservative collector and donor, we learned.More on Trump’s statue push with @oliviacgeorge.bsky.social.
The Trump administration sought phone records of several Times journalists and their relatives — including one reporter’s mother — to try unmasking confidential sources who provided information about the security capabilities of Trump’s new Air Force One jet.www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/b…
SCOOP: After pardoning hundreds of allies over the course of his 1st 18 months back in the WH, Trump this month quietly rejected clemency applications from nearly 6,000 people who mostly lacked connections & had been waiting in a queue at @TheJusticeDept. https://t.co/3NAcYDW867
WSJ report on the stunning amount of money Israel is spending on propaganda includes this: Brad Parscale works for Israel AND is chief strategy officer at Salem media. His contract for Israel involved “integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties”(!!) pic.twitter.com/oPNy2bg7pS
🚨BREAKING: Pro-voting groups asked a federal appeals court Monday to stop Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana from using the Trump administration’s expanded SAVE database for mass voter screenings. https://t.co/E2dKmKWrhl
🚨BREAKING: A federal appeals court revived USPS’ ability to move forward with Trump’s anti-mail voting rule.The rule would mandate new federal checks before mail ballots are sent to voters
Today, I’m introducing MediKids – guaranteed healthcare for every child no matter where they live or how much their parents make.The concept is simple: Every kid deserves to be happy and healthy. Let's invest in our kids and build a stronger, healthier future.
In 2018, Chuck Edwards’ son committed suicide, allegedly with a gun. The whole ordeal is tragic.
— TheseKeystrokesKillFascists (@Agt00Soul) July 20, 2026
New Orleans published a document saying its police could put weapons on their drones, deleted it, now says it was a mistake. But it aligns exactly with when the drone manufacturer began musing about allowing police to weaponize their drones:www.404media.co/new-orleans-…
A Republican senator recited the Declaration of Independence — next to a Confederate flag.
As he stood a few feet from a Confederate flag, Sen. Dan Sullivan spoke glowingly about "core ideas" in the Declaration of Independence — like the principle that all people are "created…
Trump's DOJ brings hundreds of cases against protesters accusing them of "assaulting ICE officers," and these cases turn out, almost uniformly, to be predicated on easily exposed lies. The fact that protesters and bystanders regularly record everything that happens on their smartphones
Question: Do you regret giving ICE more money, given the killings, including the one in your state? Susan Collins: Q: No regrets, Senator? Collins: That money went to body cameras and training Q: They didn't wear cameras, though, did they Senator? Collins: pic.twitter.com/BUePoTv4M6
NEWS: The Trump administration has activated a secretive and never-before-used legal process to quickly deport foreign nationals deemed to be “alien terrorists” or their immediate family members.
In other sports news of the day, a golfer at The Open Championship told officials he wanted to call Trump to ask him for assistance after he was penalized for breaking a ruleSource: http://www.the-daily-drive.com/p/fox-steals…
The Chief Justice for the District of Minnesota, Eric C. Tostrud, tossed out a federal lawsuit Monday that aimed to invalidate Minnesota state and local policies that limit collaboration with immigration enforcement.
Immigration enforcement shouldn’t come at the cost of the public’s safety or trust.38 Senate colleagues joined me to renew the call for commonsense reforms—including body cameras & greater transparency—following the fatal ICE shootings in Maine & Texas.www.pressherald.com/2026/07/20/d…
[Real human costs of Trump's deportation] Senior Living Facility in Distress as Immigrant Caregivers Are Forced Out “Our work force is being drastically disrupted, relationships are being severed and lives are being upended right now” http://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/u…
Pentagon proposes new secrecy power to withhold unclassified records from public-access laws making it harder for the public to know how taxpayer money is being spent within the government’s largest federal agency raising concerns among watchdogs: CBS News https://t.co/cO9Gu3vtBG
Before "the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes … [that] injured dozens of U.S. service members …But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage."
Oil prices jumped above $90 per barrel Sunday in the first major trading since the deaths of three U.S. service members and escalating Middle East hostilities.www.axios.com/2026/07/19/o…
Q: There are no signs Iran is ready to stop fighting. So what's the plan?TRUMP: How do you know there are no signs? Do you know something I don't?Q: They continue to kill AmericasT: They want to meet desperately. You don't get that when you listen to your fake station. You dont know anything.
Q: Do you believe Iran has moved nuclear centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain?TRUMP: All we do is read the fake news. Maybe this one they have right. But it's okay. It doesn't mean anything unless they have the material. We'll be hitting that area pretty soon and very heavily.
Q: Do you think Iran is trying to impact the midterm elections by threatening the Strait of Hormuz?TRUMP: Probably. They won't have any impact on me. I'm just going to do the right thing. I don't view it as, 'Gee, we're having an election.' I think people are very impressed.
Q: Do you think Iran is trying to impact the midterm elections by threatening the Strait of Hormuz?TRUMP: Probably. They won't have any impact on me. I'm just going to do the right thing. I don't view it as, 'Gee, we're having an election.' I think people are very impressed.
The largest copyright class action settlement in history was granted final approval Monday, with $1.5 billion awarded to authors and creators whose work was used by the AI company Anthropic to train its large language models. http://www.courthousenews.com/anthropic-to…
Why do these haters hate so much towards the LGBTQ+ people? We never hurt them, but they claim we hurt their god. But if that is true then can’t their all powerful god fix such an offense? Unless he made the LGBTQ+ people as he wanted them to be.
I want to point out the total switch and bait these haters use. Read the article to see the hate and refusal to accept anyone not straight and cis. Here is a quote from this person; notice how he frames it just to incite outrage.
Forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who ‘identifies’ as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five-year-old girls.”
See the bait and switch? A teen boy is somehow threatening your little 5 yr old girl. Oh the humaity.
Congressman Brian Babin, R-Texas, Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, speaks about the introduction of the Birthright Citizenship Act at a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. | Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK
A Republican member of Congress went to an event hosted by a hate group and, during a prayer, thanked God for sending Donald Trump to stop children from being led “down the path of homosexuality and perversion.”
“Lord, we beseeched thee,” prayed Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance event at the Museum of the Bible in D.C. on February 4. The FRC is classified as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Our prayers were answered in getting us a new president and taking a different direction in our country than we had seen for the previous four years,” he continued. “Apostasy, blasphemy, taking our children down the path of homosexuality and perversion. Open borders. Criminals running rampant in our streets.”
“Lord, we have new leadership, and we thank you for that. But Lord, we know that government is not going to save our country. It’s going to be the American people returning to the path that you have set out for us and our Founding Fathers.”
Babin has consistently gotten a score of “0” on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard for the past several sessions of Congress, showing his solid opposition to LGBTQ+ equality.
In 2022, Babin was one of several Congressional Republicans who introduced a federal bill in the House to ban schools, libraries, hospitals, government entities, or other organizations from “hosting or promoting any program, event, or literature involving sexually-oriented material.” The bill defined “sexually-oriented material” to include anything that discusses LGBTQ+ people.
In 2015, Babin was outraged that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
“As a strong supporter of traditional marriage and a firm believer in state sovereignty, I am deeply disappointed that five members of the U.S. Supreme Court have over-ruled tens of millions of Americans – including millions in the State of Texas – who have voted to enact state statutes and state Constitutional amendments to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” he said at the time.
“Traditional marriage has been under assault as courts and some state legislatures have sought to both redefine marriage as something other than between one man and one woman and to penalize and discriminate against those who have religious and conscience convictions against the redefinition of marriage,” he continued.
In 2016, he introduced a bill to roll back Obama-era protections for transgender students, saying that those protections were “throwing common sense and decency out the window and forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who ‘identifies’ as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five-year-old girls.”
The Obama-era protections did not allow for boys to use girls’ facilities. Instead, they were recommendations about how schools could accommodate transgender students, which included allowing them to use facilities associated with their gender identity.
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Hard to keep pace with the President’s corrupt profiteering off the presidency, but here’s yet another scheme, this time to save his failing social media business:www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/b…
FT Exclusive: Donald Trump's social media company has discussed charging traders and investors as much as $100,000 a month for faster access to the US president's posts on his Truth Social platform. ft.trib.al/8fn5jhq
Remember back in 2020 when we found out about Trump's secret bank account in China, and that China's biggest state-controlled bank had rented out three floors in Trump Tower? I sure do. Interesting timing given his lies about China interfering in the 2020 election. http://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/u…
Trump's embarrassing rant last night about an election he lost six years ago made two things very clear:1. He's not focused on making life better for Americans. Not even close.2. We should act now to counteract any efforts to undermine our elections. http://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/…
NEW: DHS plans to pay Thomson Reuters $125 million for access to its databases which includes peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information — to help ICE investigate “voter fraud”, according to documents reviewed by 404 Media.
The CEO of Foundation Future Industries, which counts the president’s son as its chief strategy adviser, tells WIRED it’s exploring some “kinetic things.” http://www.wired.com/story/humano…
The parents of a transgender teen who died by suicide earlier this year are speaking out about the toll Idaho’s anti-trans laws and the Trump administration’s anti-trans crusade took on their daughter.
“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse Thorpe told NBC News in a recent profile. “It got inside.”
Thorpe and ex-husband Joseph Pollard describe their late daughter, May Pollard, as an energetic and curious child who loved sloths, video games, and writing poetry. She just wanted to live her life and experience the same things any teen does. But she was also keenly aware of the wave of anti-trans laws and sentiment that have swept Idaho and much of the U.S. in recent years.
According to NBC News, May, who had also been diagnosed with autism, came out as trans when she was in eighth grade. She began receiving gender-affirming medical care in ninth grade. But due to Idaho’s ban on such care for minors, passed in 2022 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024, her parents were forced to travel to Portland, Oregon, every six months to get May the care she needed. Following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Thorpe began making the 13-hour round trip by car to avoid creating a flight record amid the administration’s relentless crackdown on gender-affirming care for young people.
While the treatment improved things for May, the obstacles placed between her and the care she needed by anti-trans legislators continued to weigh on her.
Then, in July 2023, Idaho’s law banning trans students from accessing single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity took effect. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of Boise High School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, and in July 2025, May joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe. In court filings, May described feeling stigmatized by being forced to use her campus’s two single-occupancy restrooms, which came to be referred to as the “trans bathrooms.”
“It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender,” she said. “I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly. For me, it is not a part of myself I talk about or that I feel is the most important part of my identity.”
Her parents told NBC News that May would avoid eating and drinking during the school day, hoping to not have to use the school’s bathrooms. “I just want to fit in,” she wrote in her affidavit in the Lambda Legal case. “It is upsetting to think that I may have to go through the rest of high school without access to something as basic as the ability to use the same restroom as everyone else.”
May’s parents say she became more troubled last fall and winter, according to NBC News. She attempted to run away to Oregon, and at least one of her poems seemed to reference self-harm. Then on the morning of January 27, Thorpe woke to find May missing from her bedroom. She later found her daughter’s body in a downstairs bedroom. May was just 16 years old.
When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.
“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”
As NBC News notes, over the last few years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) has signed 15 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In April, Little signed a pair of bills, one of which made it a criminal offense for trans people to use the bathroom associated with their gender, while the other banned Pride flags on government buildings.
As for Lambda Legal’s challenge to the state’s school bathroom ban, at the time of May’s death, she was one of just two plaintiffs left in the case, as all the others had graduated high school and no longer held standing. Earlier this spring, Lambda Legal moved to dismiss the case after the final plaintiff graduated.
But Thorpe has continued to protest Idaho’s anti-trans laws. According to NBC News, she stood outside Gov. Little’s office during a March 31 protest holding a photo of her daughter.
“I wanted to support the protesters and remind everyone, including the governor,” Thorpe told the outlet, “that the stakes are real.”
“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” she said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”
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I am sorry this is so late getting out. Now that I can walk again I am helping Ron renovate the house and create my new office by making the meals and doing the dishes and laundry. But I am exhausted at the end of the day. I got to bed between 6 and 7 pm and get up between 4 and 5 am. I am not complaining, just telling the facts of my life. On Monday the 6th I got a spine shot that let me walk again. It is slowly wearing off and the pain and neuropathy in my right leg is again increasing. This morning I made breakfast of fried potatoes, two slices of bacon each, two sausage patties each, and three eggs fried over medium where the whites are fully cooked and the yolk is still yellow and runny. Ron wanted two whole muffins and I had two slices of toast.
Then I went out with Ron to the nearby Publix to get our 4 cases of Publix caffeine free diet cola which is 24 two litter bottles and while I waited for the store to bring them out to me Ron got a few snacks I wanted, such as peanuts and almonds, along with a few other things. Then when we got home I started the laundry of towels and sat down for a bit. Then got up to make Ron lunch but he saw how tired I was and told me he could get it himself so I started doing dishes.
Our next goal is to get the meat slicer out and make breakfast steaks and sliced ham for sandwiches out of the two medium hams we bought. It is far cheaper that way than buying individual ham steaks and sliced ham from the deli. Then Ron says he will make supper but I think if I can stand I will. But I am very tired. So now at 2:20 pm I am trying to finish the morning cartoons / memes / news posts.
But the real reason for writing this on this post is tomorrow. I have my spine surgery scheduled for 07:30 in the morning. Yes I am worried, but I have to have it. This is the one where they put me almost mostly under (the person who called me told me I wouldn’t be able to remember it happened). Heard that before. But I did remember. So nothing by mouth but my morning pills which they went over with Ron and I.
I admit I am struggling with the fact that I will be basicly nude and unable to protect myself during this. I have been drugged for sex in my childhood. So as I told people here I have to have a colonoscopy, and this is the same issue. The thing I have to help me is that this surgeon I have known and been getting epidurals from him that required my butt to be exposed. Therefore, I trust him.
I never told him but I know he knows of my childhood abuse because Doctor Brenda must have recorded it in my chart. Anyway the point is if I can get the cartoons / memes / and news post out tomorrow I will. I just don’t know how I will feel after the M.I.L.D. surgery to cut and trim the spinal cord in my lower spine. Oh Ron and I just trimmed up two hams into sandwich meat and ham steaks for breakfast. I will post that soon. Hugs
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Hey Tumblr guess what? For the next two weeks, posters are back in my online shop!! You get to choose between 4 rad designs. Get them while they’re hot!
Ron nad I have library cards. They let you borrow far more than books. They also have audio books, movies, TV shows, and games for every platform. When I want a book to listen to but it is too expensive, as audio books tend to be, we borrow it from the library app. The cool thing is if our branch doesn’t have it the main system will somewhere and we can still borrow it. Hugs
Alex Bollinger (He/Him)February 10, 2026, 9:03 am ESTCongressman Brian Babin, R-Texas, Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, speaks about the introduction of the Birthright Citizenship Act at a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. | Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK
John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT
Ron nad I have library cards. They let you borrow far more than books. They also have audio books, movies, TV shows, and games for every platform. When I want a book to listen to but it is too expensive, as audio books tend to be, we borrow it from the library app. The cool thing is if our branch doesn’t have it the main system will somewhere and we can still borrow it. Hugs
