He Is Not Happy Until...

The economy, healthcare, and crime are the top concerns for most voters, while trans rights tend to fall low down the list. Yet we are often treated as “low-hanging fruit.” Politicians like Trump and his cohorts exploit ignorance about trans people to redirect attention away from more pressing issues, such as government corruption, violence, and the erosion of civil liberties. By stoking fear and misunderstanding about trans people, they create a convenient distraction from the real challenges facing citizens.

Stand up to Trump's SOTU attack on trans kids

Opinion: The president's demonization of trans youth in his State of the Union requires a concerted pushback in school boards, family conversations, workplaces, and everyday speech, writes contributor Josh Ackley.

The Advocate

Josh Ackley

Feb 25, 2026

There is a comforting story many of us tell about progress. We imagine rights arrive because the world improves, knowledge spreads, time passes, and people naturally become kinder. We picture history as a staircase that society slowly climbs together.

Anyone paying attention now understands that is not how this works. Rights survive only when someone decides to hold them in place.

Oh... that is so true. Our rights are only skin deep! One judge, one legislator, and one governor away from loosing them!

Political speeches often elevate individual stories to humanize public policy, but this was something different. Here the young person’s life was enlisted as proof of a broader cultural crisis. Family dynamics, medical realities, and ongoing legal proceedings were flattened into a narrative of urgency and threat. The audience was invited to feel alarm rather than curiosity and certainty rather than compassion. Anecdote became mandate in a matter of seconds, and a child’s vulnerability was transformed into justification for federal intervention.

We can do the same! Our stories are powerful! Our families are powerful!

I have been out in this community for a quarter of a century. I have seen children transition, and I have detransition and get on with their lives. But these children who are poster children for the conservatives who are parading them around the country to go and tell their stories before legislators, I have to wonder what is that doing to them?

Trump uses State of the Union to attack trans rights and calls for ban on schools allowing social transitioning

LGBT+ groups say ‘forced outing’ endangers vulnerable gender nonconfirming teens in unsupportive families

The Independent 

Alex Woodward

25 February 2026

President Donald Trump used a teenage girl’s story to call for a ban on states and schools allowing transgender and nonbinary students to socially transition without parental consent, in what civil rights groups have called “forced outing” that endangers vulnerable children.

Trump singled out the story of a Virginia teenager during his State of the Union address Tuesday to call on Congress to further restrict transgender and nonbinary youth after his administration imposed sweeping bans targeting trans Americans over the last year.

Sage Blair’s mother, Michele, sued the Appomattox County School Board in 2023 over allegations that the district did not disclose information that Sage was identifying as male.

As I said, the harm that they are doing to these children is criminal! They are creating lifelong angst for them. They will always have a deep voice because Trump and his religious cohorts! 

I have seen so many trans people detransition only to retransition. They were under so much family and/or religious pressure that they had to detransition. But in their souls they knew the truth.

Changes!

A couple of the medical associations have changed their policies on us.

Two medical associations update their recommendations on gender-affirming care for trans youth

The recommendations are not establishing new clinical practice guidelines for gender-affirming care, one organization said.

The Advocate

By Trudy Ring

Feb 05, 2026

The American Medical Association, which has long supported gender-affirming care for transgender youth, has now endorsed some restrictions.

The AMA recommended Wednesday that any gender-affirming surgeries be delayed until adulthood, The New York Times reports. While genital surgery is almost never performed on minors, some teens undergo top surgery or facial modifications. Gender-affirming care for youth more commonly includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, social transition, and counseling.

Healthcare providers in New York state were successfully sued for $2 million! If I had to guess I would say that this was the results of the lawsuit.

Numerous hospitals have stopped providing gender-affirming care to young people, fearing the loss of funding. The actions by the AMA and the ASPS may stop with the surgery recommendations, or they may lead to further restrictions on this care, making it harder for trans youth to access.

The plastic surgeons group cited two studies that are controversial among health care professionals and supporters of trans rights — the U.K.’s Cass Review and a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the latter of which promotes conversion therapy and discredits gender-affirming care. Advocates and experts have said both the Cass Review and the HHS report are filled with misinformation, ignoring studies that indicate gender-affirming care is beneficial for young people.

See this morning's post.

Market Place writes that,

That rule is not in effect yet, and 19 states have sued to block it, but hospitals are spooked; many wouldn’t be able to operate without Medicaid and Medicare funding. Already in recent weeks, a number have stopped offering gender-affirming care to minors, at least for now.

The attacks on transition-related care, at both the state and federal levels, are having a profound effect on transgender kids and their families. They’re also having a profound effect on health care providers. 

In Colorado, two big hospitals that offered gender-affirming care to kids and teenagers, Children’s Hospital and Denver Health, both stopped in early January. Casey Cash, a family nurse practitioner in Fort Collins, was on vacation with her family for the new year when the news broke.

The hospitals are running sacred and can't blame them... most of their funding comes through Medicare and Medicaid funds. Many families are migrating north to Democratic states, but also many doctors and healthcare providers are also fleeing. Med schools are seeing a drop in students in states that ban abortions and trans healthcare... they want a complete education with training for abortions and trans care.

I Was An Intern*…

And I was asked to attend a meeting and the meeting left a lasting impression on me.

LGBTQ kids kicked out with nowhere to go; Life on the streets

Kicked out, surviving by living on park benches & truck stops, these kids face a terrifying reality of discrimination, isolation, & violence

The Los Angeles Blade

By Simha Hadda

April 17, 2023

With homophobia, bullying, harassment, and extremist hate on the rise, both from the government and civilians alike, queer youth of today are facing a torrent of obstacles leading to a devastating increase in mental health crises.

Even more devastating is the number of queer youth who are facing these challenges while homeless. Kicked out of their homes and living on park benches and truck stops, these kids face a terrifying reality of discrimination, isolation, and violence. 

The Rainbow Youth Project a nonprofit based out of Indiana serves as a godsend for many of these LGBTQ+ youth. The organization provides mental health, financial, housing, services and counseling assistance to homeless LGBTQ+ youth under the age of eighteen across the nation.

Kicked Out with Nowhere to Go

Seventeen-year-old Rainbow Youth Project clients, KV from Monrovia, California, and Mayra from just outside Houston, Texas, shared their stories of living on the streets after their families kicked them out for being queer.

You have to understand, my background is from a white suburban middle class town. In high school we had zero minorities. So when I was interning I was asked to attend a meeting of the Judicial Branch Court Support Services Division meeting. I went into the meeting cold, not really understand what the meeting was about.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Mayra told The Blade. “I couldn’t call any of my friends because everybody was making fun of me and threatening to beat me up. I just kind of hung out in the park for a couple of days. After a few days, I realized that was still my best option. I just fell into staying on the streets.”

Mayra took to sleeping in the bathrooms of truck travel stops, sporadically getting handouts of leftover food from restaurants such as Subway and Cinnabon.

What the meeting was about was a runaway trans girl. Her parents threw her out when she came out as trans, and the meeting talked about what happened after that.

 “The first thing I had to learn was safety,” said KV. “There are some pretty bad people out there. I got beat up a couple of times because I was in somebody’s space. It’s almost like a game. You have to learn the rules of the game like this is Joe’s space over here. Even if his stuff isn’t here, you can’t be in that area, or he is going to get mad. People don’t understand even if you are were living in a park, your space is like your house, and you can’t go into somebody else’s house. Learning that was kind of hard. I had heard about tent cities and all of that, but I was never really a part of it before.”

The girl ended up sleeping in the Bridgeport bus station where she was “befriended” by a pimp who took her under his wings… and forced her on heroin… and pimped her out.

“It was a tough thing, and I’m not proud of what I had to do to get the things I needed,” KV told The Blade. “But I think the thing that shocked me about it more than even me having to do this was how many kids were doing it and how many people were looking for it. I mean, people every day, every 15 minutes to 30 minutes, would come up to me looking for kids for sex. I’d be walking down Santa Monica or just sitting at a bus stop, and somebody would pull over and say, ‘What do you do for 50? What do you do for 20? That happens all the time.”

She got busted. She ratted out the pimp. He put a contract out on her.

“Rainbow Youth Project saved my life,” KV told the Blade, who found out about RYP through a friend. “My goal was to get off the streets. I had had enough. Even after a week, I knew I had to do something. I called Rainbow Youth Project. I wasn’t expecting too much. I spoke to Brandon. Brandon asked me where I was, and I said LA. He said, ‘What if I told you we have a counselor we work with at UCLA that might be able to help you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I ain’t got no way out to UCLA. No insurance, none of that stuff. He said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you.’ The next day, he sent an Uber for me that took me up to see the counselor at UCLA. They already had an overnight package that had blankets and socks and underwear stuff that I didn’t have and a phone. And I’ve been in touch with them ever since. That was in June.”

Court Support Services Division was looking for a place to take her in, a shelter, foster parents, someone to help. Someone to help a 16 years old drug addict… with a contract out on her.

LGBTQ youth are overrepresented among young people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in the United States. This elevated risk of homelessness and housing instability has detrimental effects on LGBTQ youths’ mental health.

Do you know what it is like when I hear all these conservative right-wing politicians come down against trans kids knowing that this is what those politicians are committing trans children to by not allowing proper healthcare. Knowing when politicians pass laws forcing teachers to out students to their parents they are forcing teenagers out on the street.

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*I was going for my MSW and my second year internship was with a LGBTQ family and youth services organizations.