➡️ The government has officially shut down, the third time this has happened under President Trump's leadership - and Democrats in the Congressional Equality Caucus wasted no time blaming the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Trump ally Michael Flynn urged a federal appeals court to uphold Trump's renewed ban on trans military service in a filing that reads like a culture war manifesto, and Texas is cracking down on state universities teaching about gender identity.
We are witnessing the restoration of patriarchy, nationalism, racism and capitalist individualism. It is the nostalgic fury of right-wing movements that want to return to an idealised past, one that perhaps never truly existed, and to re-establish hierarchical orders. We need to revive a Marxist analysis in light of the new social movements. We must commit to saying what we want to see realised, and not just complain about what is going wrong.
State schools in Scotland have been pushed to create toilet policies based on "biological sex", under updated guidance from Holyrood. New recommendations issued by the Scottish government on Monday (29 September) called for all schools to have separate facilities, including toilets and changing rooms, for boys and girls "on the basis of biological sex". For the purposes of the guidance, the term "biological sex" referred to "sex recorded at birth", and schools will also be "required to provide accessible facilities for young people with a disability".
Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door.
These are not budgetary measures, they are ideological attacks [that] would erase protections, endanger lives and weaponise federal funding to coerce institutions into abandoning care. For many, access to HRT and affirming care is not optional, it's life-saving.
"How radical is Abigail Spanberger?" a voice says at the start of the 30-second spot. "She didn't just vote to let men in girls' locker rooms. She wrote the bill. Spanberger believes this man has the right to undress next to little girls, but it gets worse. If a child wants to change genders, Spanberger says the parents shouldn't be told. That's insane."
the UK health secretary said the government was looking to create "third spaces" for trans women, away from female single-sex facilities such as toilets and changing rooms. "I know there will be lots of people, probably some Mumsnet users, and there'll be lots of people in the LGBT community and allies who would say that that's outrageous," he said. "I'm trying to find a way through on this that maybe not everyone loves but can live with and treats people with dignity and respect."
I feel I am living out my ancestors' wildest dreams: being here, loud and proud in my skin, happy with who I am, and representing my entire community. It feels so amazing and I'm so happy to do it alongside my sisters. It means the world to me.
On Thursday evening, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that the FBI is developing tools to identify transgender suspects and classify them as "nihilistic violent extremists." Within hours, the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation - the same outfit driving Project 2025's blueprint now being implemented inside the federal government - released a four-page memo urging the bureau to go even further. Its proposal: formally designate all transgender activism as "Trans Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism," a new category of domestic terror threat.
Recent tweets from Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth inaccurately linked transgender people to an increase in mass shootings following the August 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the 47th school shooting in the U.S. to date. The truth is, 96% of mass shootings are carried out by cisgender (non-transgender) men, a fact Ainsworth does not tweet about.
The headline on a lengthy piece in The New York Times late last month read: "Donald Trump's Big Gay Government." It profiled a certain type of gay man: white, successful, conservative, probably handsome (Trump and company dislike unattractive people), full of themselves, disdainful of most of the rainbow colors that represent the GLBT community beginning with women (although they love Melania), and absolutely indifferent to the civil rights movement that now allows them to be out and proud.
As Courthouse News reports, the scene at the Solano County Courthouse in Central California earlier this week was pandemonium as 30-year-old Alex "Somni" Leatham and 24-year-old Suri Dao awaited the official date for their trial, in which both are charged with the attempted murder of their former landlord, Curtis Lind, who was blinded during a 2022 katana attack over a rent dispute - an assault that ultimately became the first of six violent crimes associated with the loose group.
The proposal by the Department of Education would halt data collection on nonbinary students, remove gender identity and sex characteristics from the Office of Civil Rights' definitions of harassment and bullying on the basis of sex and cease collection of data on harassment and bullying on the basis of gender identity. This will almost certainly result in more hostile school environments for these young people, said Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights.
California is leading a multistate coalition in opposition to proposed federal changes that would halt the collection of data on bullying and harassment of transgender and nonbinary students. Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the multistate coalition this week in partnership with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
"These individuals were exercising their constitutional and civil rights when they were singled out and removed from the Iowa Capitol solely because of their identity and their affiliation with an LGBTQ+ organization," Devin C. Kelly, an attorney for the students, told the outlet. "At a time when LGBTQ+ Iowans and their families continue to face growing challenges, this settlement reaffirms a simple truth: all Iowans are equal under the law."
Over the last four years, LGBTQ+ people-especially transgender people-have been attacked from every angle: bans on healthcare, restrictions on bathrooms, even attempts to restrict driver's license gender markers. But one of the earliest and most revealing features of this backlash was the push to strip books about queer and trans lives from classrooms and libraries. At first, these bans cloaked themselves in neutrality, prohibiting vague "gender and sexuality" discussions-rules that always seemed to allow depictions of straight marriage while quietly targeting anything queer.
The cases the EEOC withdrew from included those brought on behalf of an Alabama hospitality group worker who alleged their manager said they needed to be "hidden" on the night shift before firing them outright; a transgender woman at an Illinois hog farm who said her coworker exposed his genitals to her and touched her breasts; and a transgender hotel worker in New York who said their supervisor referred to them as "transformer" and "it."
Such a move would represent a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration's fight against the rights of transgender Americans, CNN reported, especially since restricting gun rights in any capacity has long been a line in the sand for Republicans. The DOJ is reportedly looking at ways to designate transgender people as mentally ill and therefore ineligible to exercise their Second Amendment rights, one Justice official told CNN.
Johnson, appearing on America's Newsroom on Fox News Friday, was asked by host Dana Perino if "there has to be some sort of accountability on the transgender front." The shooter, Robin Westman, who killed two children and wounded 18 (some sources say 17) people at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis Wednesday, has been reported to be transgender. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene.
For almost three years, a University of Wyoming sorority has been the unlikely epicenter of a national battle over belonging. U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson's 35-page ruling not only rejected the plaintiffs' claims of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract, but also declared that Kappa, as a private nonprofit, has the right to define "woman" on its own terms. "In short, we are required to leave Kappa alone," Johnson wrote.
In June 2019, according to Q News, SC was arrested while visiting Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, on charges of "impersonation". She was taken to a women's prison and strip searched. A court ordered that she be subjected to "gender determination," which included a genital examination, hormone testing, blood sampling and radiological testing. Her medical records were later leaked to journalists.
