A Headline Grab!

How we made it onto the FBI’s Most Wanted list: Family battles turn into an international incident when a parent who is trans has custody of a child.

Couple accused of kidnapping child to Cuba for feared gender reassignment, DOJ says

The child's biological father, who transitioned to a woman after the child was born, and her partner are accused of faking a camping trip to Canada and going to Cuba instead, according to federal officials.

NBC Miami

By Briana Trujillo

April 22, 2026

A Utah couple is accused of kidnapping a 10-year-old child and taking them to Cuba for a family member believed was an effort to have the child undergo gender reassignment surgery, the Department of Justice said in a news release.

Rose Inessa-Ethington, who is the child's biological father, and her partner Blue Inessa-Ethington, were arrested by the FBI and are facing federal kidnapping charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah. Rose, 42, shares custody with the child’s biological mother, who is only identified as “LB” in federal court filings. Rose transitioned to female after the child’s birth, according to her family members.

According to court documents, Rose and Blue, 32, were supposed to take the child to Canada, along with Blue's 3-year-old child, for a planned camping trip, but never checked in to their hotel in Calgary, Alberta, or the campground they were scheduled to stay at for five days. The 10-year-old was expected to be returned to the biological mother on April 3, but the group had not been heard from since March 28.

Instead, they allegedly flew from Vancouver to Mexico City, and then boarded a flight to Havana, according to the criminal complaint.

The local police said,

"Concerns existed that the child was transported to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty," the FBI said, citing concerns expressed by a family member who they say blamed Rose for manipulating the child to identify as a girl.

But here is the kicker!

The complaint doesn't say if the couple actually planned on getting the child gender-affirming surgery in Cuba or how they would get it because that surgery isn't legal for children in Cuba.

Like hundreds of child custody cases where a parent abducts a child, it becomes a federal case—but when the parent is trans, it makes national headlines. As the article mentioned, Cuba doesn't even perform these surgeries, so why is this being blown so far out of proportion? Like I said, there are numerous custody cases where a parent abducts a child to a foreign nation that never become front-page news. The New Republic has a few ideas on why this is happening.

How the FBI Turned a Custody Dispute Into Cheap Anti-Trans Fodder

When the FBI took over an alleged international kidnapping case from local law enforcement—and sent a plane to retrieve a child from Cuba—certain details of the story changed in telling ways.

Melissa Gira Grant

April 30, 2026

Earlier this month, someone at the FBI made an extraordinary decision: to send a plane to Cuba to bring home an American child who had allegedly been kidnapped. It was a possibly unprecedented intervention, apparently connected to a family member’s reported fear that the child’s alleged kidnappers sought “gender reassignment surgery” for the 10-year-old. On April 21, federal prosecutors announced that they had apprehended and charged the child’s parent and her partner. That parent, now in federal custody, is a transgender woman.

As yet, it’s difficult to know how much truth there is behind any of these accusations. The details, as they were reported in The New York Times and elsewhere, were sparse. That didn’t stop FBI Director Kash Patel from boasting about his agency’s having foiled the alleged kidnapping in a post on X, one of his favored communications channels. “FBI and our partners acted quickly and saved a young child who was kidnapped and ended up in Cuba,” he wrote, “with the alleged kidnapper parent hoping to transition the child.” Patel then shared a story from the right-wing website The Daily Wire, titled “FBI Spoils Trans Father’s Plan to Transition Son In Cuba.”

That is what this is all about: the headlines!

In the available court documents, the only source for the “surgery” claim came from an FBI agent, Jennifer M. Waterfield, who identified herself as part of “the Violent Crimes Against Children squad in the Salt Lake City field office.” Waterfield’s sworn statement was filed on April 16 in federal court by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Utah District, as part of the criminal complaint against the alleged kidnappers. That complaint was also published with the office’s press release about the case. These four pages of narrative in this one agent’s sworn statement appear to be the primary source for the reported claims that the child was kidnapped for “gender reassignment surgery.” In the statement, it is not clear whether Waterfield had heard the claims firsthand or was reporting something learned secondhand. Few news outlets seem to have paid attention to the distinction, and the oversight is telling. When included in a criminal complaint, what very well may amount to a game of telephone can appear as authoritative as anything else in the filing—after all, a reader (or a reporter) may conclude, these are sworn statements.

And they just made this child the poster child for the current administration’s anti-trans pogrom. However, there is no evidence that she was planning on doing this to her child.

Concerns exist. That’s the basis for these stories, “concerns” without attribution or detail, along with some handwritten notes, presumed to belong to the alleged kidnappers, describing purported instructions from an unknown therapist. It is not at all clear what was meant by the agent’s description of “gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty.” Is the FBI agent alleging that a family has “concerns” about a 10-year-old child undergoing a vaginoplasty or an orchiectomy? Breast augmentation? The Times spoke to the brother of one of the defendants—the child’s uncle—who may well be the same family member referred to in the FBI affidavit. The article says he told the newspaper that the parent “had been ‘rather adamantly pushing’ for the child to get transition surgery since the child was about 5 years old.” But surgery at 5 is even less plausible than surgery at 10.

Remember in Minneapolis when ICE killed those two people and the first thing out of FBI Director Kash Patel’s mouth was, "They're terrorists!" and "Antifa!" just to grab headlines? The New Republic writes: "For the people who have had perhaps the most painful, frightening experiences of their lives transformed into FBI headline fodder... it must be profoundly disorienting and upsetting."

All of this is simply an attempt at grabbing headlines and inciting anger against the trans community.

I Don't Understand

It always seems like it is their rights, that we don't have any rights at all.

Christian school wins $566k in ‘religious freedom’ lawsuit after trans basketball player row

Mid Vermont Christian School, a private PK-12 school in Quechee, Vermont, has won $566,000 after its girls’ basketball team refused to play a competing team with a transgender student-athlete.

Pink News

May 06

by Siân Thompson

Mid Vermont chose to forfeit an upcoming game with Long Trail School back in 2023.

Ahead of their forfeiture, Mid Vermont had requested that the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA) ban the trans student-athlete from playing, but the league said doing so would violate its nondiscrimination policies and state law.

Alongside forfeiting, the Christian academy said: “Playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardises the fairness of the game and the safety of our players.”

As a result of citing their unwillingness to compete against a trans player, Mid Vermont was banned from the state’s school sports league and other extracurricular activities in the state for two seasons.

In response, Mid Vermont enlisted the help of conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) to file a lawsuit against the VPA.

[...]

Although an earlier ruling by a Vermont federal judge upheld the ban, in September 2025, a New York-based US Court of Appeals ruled in favour of Mid Vermont, stating that the school’s “religious freedom” had been infringed upon.

I want you to substitute any other protected class. Here in Connecticut some of the protected classes are: race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity or expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, age, present or past history of mental disorder, mental retardation, sexual orientation, learning or physical disability, political activity, union activity or the exercise of rights protected by the United States Constitution. 

Supposed that they refused to play against a team with players who were of a different race, do you think that is accepted able? People say that this is different, it is not about race, but in the past people justified slavery and discrimination with their religion.

For example, there was the 1968 case of Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., where a drive-in BBQ chain refused to serve Black patrons, claiming a religious exemption. The owners argued they had a protected right to discriminate based on their religious beliefs. However, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that religious freedom does not grant a "blank check" to bypass civil rights laws.

So why are we different? Why is okay to discriminate against us?

We also hear... well race isn't a choice, while being trans is! Which is totally bull I never chose to be trans. There are tons of research out there that proves it is not a choice. In the animal world there are trans animals.

But these judges are put their religious beliefs into their rulings ahead of the Constitution!

Puberty Blockers

Did that get your attention? It is a controversial topic on both sides of the political aisle.

So, why do people take puberty blockers?

The simple answer is exactly what the name implies: to pause puberty. For transgender youth, going through the "wrong" puberty can be a deeply distressing experience.

For trans girls, puberty means their voice deepens and they grow facial hair. Without blockers, they may have to live the rest of their lives with a voice they don't recognize as their own, or undergo expensive, painful treatments to remove their beards. For trans boys, while some changes are different, their bodies still feel like a betrayal as they develop unwanted secondary sexual characteristics.

Why do critics claim they are "new" or "dangerous"?

Republicans often argue that this is a new, experimental treatment, but that is factually incorrect. The science was developed in the late 1970s, and the medication was FDA-approved in the early 1980s. It has been used clinically for decades; it is not new.

Conservatives also frequently rely on misleading data regarding health risks. They often cite studies showing that the bone density of trans children on blockers is lower than that of their cis gender peers. While it is true that bone density may lag during treatment, there is a logical reason for this: puberty itself is what triggers the surge in bone density.

If you delay puberty, you naturally delay that density increase. However, research shows that once a person stops taking blockers and begins hormone therapy or natural puberty, their bone density typically catches up to healthy levels within five years.

What Do You Give A Narcissist Who Has Everything?

Why a giant golden statue of himself of course!

Plans for gaudy Trump presidential library in Miami spark ridicule

Video posted on social media depicts a rendering of the proposed 50-storey gargantuan structure decked in gold

The Guardian

Richard Luscombe in Miami

Tue 31 Mar 2026

In a city of respected art deco buildings, ridicule is being heaped on the latest structure proposed for Miami’s skyline: the Donald J Trump presidential library, unveiled in ambitious plans posted to social media on Monday night.

A 1 minute 40 second video tour of the proposed gargantuan structure revealed it will be decked, almost inevitably, in Trump’s trademark gold, including a giant statue of him, and will feature the $400m Boeing “flying palace” gifted to him by Qatar in its cavernous lobby.

Its 50 storeys will tower above any structure surrounding it, including the adjacent Miami Freedom Tower, a symbol of US rejection of oppression and tyranny for more than 100 years.

“This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known,” Eric Trump, the president’s son and the co-chair of the non-profit foundation seeking donations to build the library, gushed on social media.

And everyone is hating it already!

“Miami deserves this building,” Eric Trump told the Miami Herald in a statement. “It will be a masterpiece, the likes of which have never been seen in Florida or really anywhere.”

Yup... that's so true! Trump is trying to out do the pharaohs of Egypt!

The Daily Beast wrote,

World leaders will be greeted by a giant golden statue of Donald Trump when they travel to Miami for this year’s G20 summit, a new photo shows.

Golfweek revealed Tuesday that the 15-foot-tall statue, a bronze figure coated in gold leaf, now stands atop a seven-foot pedestal at the president’s Trump National Doral Miami golf club—just in time for the course to host the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship this week.

Adam Schupak/Golfweek

I Wonder What Would Happen?

If you refused to pay?

If a therapist sends a bill for Conversion Therapy and you refuse to pay what happens is it not longer a 1^st Amendment issue?

Can Conversion Therapy Be Just Speech?

Trans legal experts discuss Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court conversion therapy case.

May 6, 2026

Riki Wilchins spoke with George Washington University Law scholar Naomi Schoenbaum, CUNY Political Science professor Paisley Currah, and Albany Law School scholar Ava Ayers on the Supreme Court case, Chiles v. Salazar, which by 8-1 struck down a Colorado law banning inflicting conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ kids, saying it was unconstitutionally restrained free speech. 

UPDATE One month after the ruling, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee responded by moving forward a law creating a private right for conversion therapy survivors to sue for harm, attempting to circumvent the court’s actions using an approach cribbed from the anti-trans movement, which in recent years has given detransitioners extraordinary rights to sue their providers.

This is fantastic! Did you get this part "conversion therapy survivors to sue for harm"?

Riki Wilchins: We have research repeatedly linking conversion practices to depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidality. The American Psychiatric Association and the Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have all rejected conversion therapy. Ketanji Brown Jackson, the sole dissent, noted it was banned in Colorado because of the medical profession's broad consensus. So this is another instance of the Court finding a way to go anti-science and overrule expert medical opinion right?

Since the Supreme Court has made this a First Amendment issue and is ignoring the harmful medical advice that is being given and the actual harm it may do to the children.

Connecticut already has a law protecting us but it might get struck down, the Connecticut law says,

Any conversion therapy practiced by a health care provider shall be considered unprofessional conduct and shall be grounds for disciplinary action,

So we may or may not be covered... like the lawyers say "It is my opinion that it is but I am not a judge" It will take a or a series of judgments to finally get an answer. 

---

Update: @ 2PM

Vatican report admits conversion therapy caused LGBTQ+ Catholics’ ‘profound suffering’

The historic Synod report features firsthand accounts from gay Catholics who say the dangerous practice deepened shame, isolation, and spiritual anguish.

The Advocate

Jacob Ogles

May 06, 2026

Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors in an 8-1 ruling that cast doubt on similar laws nationwide, a Catholic Church report is warning that so-called “reparative therapies” have caused LGBTQ+ Catholics “profound suffering” and spiritual harm.

The published document comes from theologians assembled for the late Pope Francis’ Synod of Bishops. Remarkably, it includes testimony from two Catholic gay men in same-sex marriages, both of whom were previously subjected to so-called "conversion therapy." That alone drew praise from advocates.

[...]

“This marks the first time that a Vatican report has included stories from LGBTQ Catholics. As such, it marks a significant step forward in the church’s relationship with the LGBTQ community,” Father James Martin, founder of the LGBTQ+ Catholic group Outreach, wrote on his organization’s website.

[...]

“It’s a really good — I would even say historic — document,” Yunuen Trujillo, a lesbian lay minister from Los Angeles, told Religion News Service. “It’s still calling for all Catholics to engage in a process of discernment that is respectful of people’s lived experiences.”

Accountability

I ran an electronic test department for over twenty years and those that I hired reflected on me. Get a load of Trump's nominee to a court bench! It is just down right amazing!

The Alarming Twitter Timeline of Trump Nominee Kara Westercamp

Personal loyalty to Trump is the most important qualification for aspiring Trump judges. But rarely has a nominee auditioned this publicly, or with this many hashtags.

Balls & Strikes

By Jay Willis

March 12, 2026

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump nominated Kara Westercamp, a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office, for a life-tenured judgeship on the U.S. Court of International Trade. On Truth Social, Trump called Westercamp a “very experienced Trade Lawyer” who “knows the Wisdom and Courage to protect the American People,” and “will always put America First.” 

Westercamp would indeed appear to bring some practical experience to the job: Prior to joining the White House Counsel’s office, she spent a decade at the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Department of Justice, where she regularly tried cases before the Court of International Trade, according to her LinkedIn profile. The fact that Trump now hopes to place Westercamp, currently serving as one of his in-house attorneys, on a body that is deeply involved in adjudicating the legal challenges to his tariffs agenda is, I am sure, a coincidence.

I see a "but" coming...

Since Trump began his second term in the White House, personal fealty to him has been the most important qualification for ambitious conservative lawyers who aspire to seats on the federal bench. Rarely, however, has a Trump nominee auditioned for a job quite so explicitly, in such a public manner, over so many years, with so many hashtags.

I see why Trump likes her, she puts loyalty ahead of the Constitution!

Reuters reported that,

Senator Dick Durbin, the panel's top Democrat, pressed Westercamp on whether she would like ​to apologize for her "prolific, inflammatory" social media posts in which she attacked various senators including Republicans ​like Senator Mitch McConnell, who she referred to as "Cocaine Mitch."

Westercamp, a trade lawyer, apologized and said she made those posts in her personal capacity while working at the U.S. Department of Justice.

[...]

Durbin ⁠and other Democrats pressed Westercamp on other social media posts in which they said she suggested law enforcement or Antifa was complicit in the violence that occurred during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when thousands of Trump supporters mounted an unsuccessful attempt to overturn Trump's ​2020 electoral defeat.

Westercamp said ​she condemned all violence ⁠that occurred that day and regretted her social media posts.

Yeah, you apologize now, now that you got called out on it!

You know if hire any people like those Trump is hiring I would have been fired!

Listen to Sen. Durbin...

All Under One Roof

The bill passed and is going on to the governor to sign.

Hun? What passed and what does it have to do with us?

It is a bill consolidates all the bias crime statues all in one section and standardize the crimes and punishments. For example a bias crime of assault might be different depending if was because of race or from religion, there could also a difference in sentencing a bias crime against a gay person verse a trans person.

In additions they were all in different parts of the criminal code.

So the bill brought them all under one umbellar with standardize sentencing.

Hate Crimes Bill Passes Legislature With Bipartisan Support

CT News Junkie

by Donald Eng

May 5, 2026

The state’s numerous hate crimes would be consolidated into a single law under the provisions of a bill that passed the General Assembly with wide bipartisan support. A similar bill passed the House last year but died in the Senate when the session ended.

Senate Bill 90, An Act Revising and Consolidating the Hate Crimes Statutes, passed the state House of Representatives 139 – 8 Tuesday morning. The bill had previously passed the Senate 36-0 on April 28.

“Hate crimes are not ordinary crimes,” said state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, the House chair of the Judiciary Committee. “The anger, anxiety and vulnerability ratchet across our neighborhoods and entire communities.”

When someone is attacked because of who they are — be it their race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation — the harm extends beyond the victim and sends a message of fear and exclusion to everyone who shares that identity, he said.

Hate crimes have risen nearly 50% in Connecticut since 2021, Stafstrom said. He added that there were 130 such crimes reported in the first three quarters of 2024. Nationally, he said, hate crimes had doubled in the last decade.

I don't like calling it a "hate crime" because some argue that they don't hate they just want us back in the closet.

The bill now heads to Gov. Ned Lamont for his expected signature.

Well yeah... it was a "Governor's" bill.

There was opposition to the bill... you want to guess by which party?

In another CT News Junkie article from back in March they write...

House Bill 6872, proposed in January by Gov. Ned Lamont, seeks to consolidate Connecticut’s multiple hate crime statutes – some of which were written as far back as 1880 – into one new hate crime chapter in the Connecticut General Statutes. This consolidation effort would also clarify some of the existing statutes by providing uniformity to the language used to describe protected groups and by removing the requirement under the law that a defendant must have acted “maliciously.”

The changes and consolidations were recommended by the Connecticut Hate Crimes Advisory Council, which was created by the General Assembly and tasked with increasing community awareness and reporting of hate crimes. Governor Lamont appointed the council members in June 2021.

An we were reappointed last year.

Cuckoo Award

We have anther winners... and losers.

Trump Gears Up to Deport Hundreds of Animals From Red State Prairie

The federal government wants to open up the land to ranchers to raise livestock for food.

The Daily Beast

William Vaillancourt

May 5 2026

The Department of Interior is moving to evict from the Montana prairie hundreds of bison—a symbol of the American West and the once-critically endangered animal on the department’s own seal.

The Bureau of Land Management, a division of the Trump administration department, revoked American Prairie’s license to graze bison on federal lands in Phillips County, which has more square miles than Connecticut. The bureau, the New York Times reported, cited the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 to claim that the land should be used to raise livestock for food. The 900 bison that roam the lands, it said, were wildlife.

The move—which has yet to go into effect but could as soon as the spring—has naturally been praised by ranchers, Republican lawmakers, and business leaders.

Anything that hammers tree huggers!

The bison are tagged and vaccinated, the foundation says. It leases land where the animals aren’t roaming to local cattle ranchers, and it maintains electric fences, allows public access through its land, sends bison to Native American tribes to boost their herds, and donates meat to food pantries, according to the Times.

But hey, the tree huggers haven't bribed er... donated to the Republican!

The Bureau of Land Management’s decision “is not grounded in new impacts or new information,” Fox told the Daily Beast in a statement. “It appears to be completely arbitrary and unfair.”

In a February press release, Fox argued that the proposal “is an unprecedented reversal of BLM’s own decision-making after more than 40 years of treating bison as eligible livestock under federal grazing law.”

Hey! Under Trump, we got the best government money can buy!