New York City schools sued federal education officials Thursday over a decision to discontinue $47 million in promised grants because of the schools’ guidelines supporting transgender students.
City officials said the federal agency led by Education Secretary Linda McMahon cut funding without the required notice or hearing after deciding that policies letting transgender students play sports and use bathrooms matching their gender identity violate Title IX, which forbids discrimination based on sex in education.
The Education Department, in a September letter, set a deadline for New York City Public Schools to change the policies or lose current and future funding for 19 specialty magnet schools.
A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests. Robby Starbuck, 36, of Nashville, was appointed in August as an adviser by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other tech platforms – in an August lawsuit settlement.
Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.
Starbuck has long pushed vaccine disinformation, and he has amplified false claims made by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. As part of his anti-DEI push, Starbuck has also spread overheated claims and falsehoods about transgender and LGBTQ people. Starbuck also baselessly asserted that city officials in Portland were working with anti-fascists, and appeared to urge a violent response.
Read the full article. Starbuck has appeared here many times for leading boycotts and threat campaigns against major corporations for their pro-LGBTQ policies. In most cases, the targeted companies rolled back such policies or ended them entirely. Hit the link for much more. No paywall.
You don’t feel secure in your masculinity,” Sam Nieves remembers his licensed therapist telling him at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “Go grab a Playboy and find a way to enjoy it,” the Mormon therapist told him.
“He told me I can’t be straight if I don’t go fishing with my dad,” says Nieves, who was 20 at the time. “He told me I needed to play more sports, listen to country music, stuff like that. He told me something was wrong with me.”
After these sessions, which lasted about a year and a half, Nieves started experiencing crippling shame and self-loathing. He eventually developed excruciating migraines and memory loss.
“My therapist just helped me find better ways to help me to hate myself,” Nieves, now 41 and living in Seattle, Washington, told Uncloseted Media.
Sam Nieves as a young adult. Photo courtesy of Nieves.
Fourteen countries have a national conversion therapy ban, while many more have state or provincial bans. In the U.S., religious leaders can practice nationwide, though licensed therapists are not allowed to apply it to kids in 23 states.
While research around torture and mental health consistently suggests the practice should be banned, almost 700,000 LGBT adults have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents.
Despite all of this, on Oct. 7 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and—if overturned—would have implications for the rest of the states with bans in place.
While the verdict will likely not be announced until June, the court seems poised to overturn it, suggesting that restrictions on therapists might violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause.
“I’m emotionally devastated for the children who will lose the protections we fought so hard to give them,” says Nieves.
Conversion Therapy and Self-Hate
Unlike many young Americans who are forced into the practice by their parents, Nieves—who was raised Mormon—opted to see a conversion therapist because his church community said that if he didn’t change his sexuality, he was letting them down.
“I actively didn’t want to be attracted to guys,” he says. “And so it was always this confusing, gaslighting situation where they would tell me to stop being gay, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying really hard not to. That’s when [the church] referred me to conversion therapy.”
Sam Nieves in his 20s. Courtesy of Nieves.
Nieves’ therapist insisted that his mom was too overbearing and his dad was not actively parenting, causing him to be gay. As his therapist continued to recommend that he engage in stereotypically masculine activities, he began to withdraw, cutting off friendships and avoiding community gatherings. His Mormon upbringing had taught him to feel shame, but conversion therapy solidified it.
“Conversion therapy gave me validation for why I hate myself. It was just building on top of what the church had already taught me,” he says.
Nieves became depressed and eventually developed a mild type of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he experienced one persona that carried shame and recognized he was gay, and another that tried to act straight. Headaches and mental fog were persistent. Thoughts of ending his life flickered through his mind.
“It was just nonstop, massive disassociation,” he says. “There was the Straight Sam and the Gay Sam. And the whole time, everyone was telling me Satan was working on me because something inside me was trying to be gay. So it was insane making. They were making me clinically insane.”
According to medical experts, repeated trauma like medical procedures, war, human trafficking, conversion therapy and terrorism can cause DID when it overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, causing their sense of self to fragment into distinct identity states as a survival mechanism. The trauma disrupts the normal integration of self, leading to symptoms like memory gaps, dissociation and distinct personality states.
When Hunter Mattison, a 29-year-old queer woman now living in Washington, was subjected to conversion therapy from her church and parents, she developed DID.
Raised in rural Idaho and immersed in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church that condemned queerness as sinful, the constant fear and shame brought on by her church’s conversion therapy program fractured her sense of self. She attributes her condition to repeated trauma that caused her brain to wall off painful memories.
“I didn’t know how to handle it other than just to check out,” Mattison told Uncloseted Media. “I still have a lot of memory gaps from the conversion therapy because of how intense it was. … Once I didn’t have the restraints of that church anymore, the memories started to return.”
Fear, Shame and Suicidal Ideation
Similar to Nieves and Mattison, Addy Sakler, who grew up in a conservative Protestant community in Ohio, says conversion therapy was “slowly killing” her.
“I figured I liked girls in kindergarten but did not have the language to describe it,” she told Uncloseted Media.
Sakler knew she wouldn’t be accepted at her church, so she put herself in conversion therapy throughout her young adulthood.
But it didn’t work. Sakler remembers the first sneaking moments of affection between grad school classes with her first crush. But after each kiss, the joy was followed by shame.
“We’d feel a lot of guilt and break up and immediately go repent,” she says. Both women were part of a church ministry that promised to “pray away the gay,” a 12-week program of lessons and deliverance sessions meant to convert them to heterosexuality. Instead, Sakler says, it nearly destroyed her.
Addy Sakler and her boyfriend before she came out. Photo courtesy of Sakler.
“I felt like a zombie walking around. I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month, two different times. It created a lot of trauma.”
Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
Addy Sakler as an adult. Courtesy of Sakler.
“You believe what they’re saying. They’re telling you you’re broken and to be right with God you have to be heterosexual and if you’re not changing, then you’re being attacked by Satan.”
For nearly 15 years, Sakler attended conversion therapy conferences across the country, including one put on by the now dissolved Exodus International.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ adults who have undergone conversion therapy have nearly twice the odds of attempting suicide and 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation compared to those who haven’t. Among LGBTQ youth, the numbers are higher, with 27% of those who experienced conversion therapy attempting suicide in the past year.
In addition, survivors experience disproportionately high rates of depression, PTSD and substance abuse. According to the findings from one Stanford Medicine study, the psychological harm caused by conversion therapy mirrors that of other severe traumas known to cause PTSD—like sexual or physical assault, the loss of someone close, or even experiences of war and torture.
Isolation and Families Torn Apart
When Curtis Lopez-Galloway told his parents he was gay at 16, they drove him two hours away from his house in southern Illinois to a conversion therapist who used the sessions to berate him for not trying hard enough to change into “the man that God wanted” him to be.
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Photo courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
Lopez-Galloway remembers being told that his attractions to other men were a symptom of a deeper lack of masculinity, that he needed to “study women to understand what kind of man he was supposed to be” and that he should “bounce his eyes, and change his thoughts to something else whenever he begins to have an attraction toward a male.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway’s treatment plan, courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Lopez-Galloway, who now runs the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a nonprofit that connects survivors of the practice, recalls frustration and shame spilling into screaming matches that tore his family apart. “My parents were miserable, I was miserable, and we would just take it out on each other,” he says. “I went to [my therapist] for six months, and he just abused me and made life worse. It pushed me deeper into the closet and made me anxious and depressed.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
“[My therapist] would use therapeutic ideas but twist them in a way that was trying to change sexuality. … He would try to manipulate me in that sort of way and really broke me down as a person,” says Lopez-Galloway.
We reached out to the center Lopez-Galloway went to for treatment but they did not respond to a request for comment. Lopez-Galloway says his parents now acknowledge the harm the therapy caused, and he says their relationship has improved.
For many survivors of conversion therapy, the trauma can last a lifetime.
Even 21 years later, Nieves still gets triggered. He dropped out of college during his last semester of counseling school because the practices were too similar to those manipulated and weaponized by his therapist. “The hardest part was fighting … to no longer be suicidal every single day,” he says. “I would say that’s the hardest part. … It’s the suicidality that you fight with once it’s over. “
Nieves and Mattison have both found support in Lopez-Galloway’s survivor network, where they meet weekly and heal together in community. Sakler has found healing in therapy for PTSD, and has found acceptance with her wife and her queer community in Sacramento, California.
Despite this, the trauma often requires undoing self-hatred and discovering self-worth.
“[We’re] constantly saying, ‘We don’t know who we are,’” Nieves says. “We don’t know how to enjoy life. We don’t know what the meaning of life is. We’re like The Walking Dead. Because just like how you break a horse, they broke our spirits. They told us everything about us was wrong and we needed to conform. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t conform.”
Even with these survivors’ experiences, along with countless testimonies from other Americans over decades, the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Colorado’s ban, with multiple justices describing it as “viewpoint discrimination.”
Nieves strongly disagrees and advises kids who are experiencing conversion therapy right now to stay strong and ask for help when possible. “This may very well be the most difficult time of your life. For many of you, it’s going to feel like a living hell, and you may even pray for death every night. I know this, because this is how [I] felt too,” he says. “Often, [conversion therapists] break other laws. If you think someone might be breaking the law during your conversion therapy, please seek out a trusted adult and let them know,” he says.
Above all, Nieves tells kids to push through no matter what. “It can and will get better if you promise yourself that you deserve authentic joy, free of lies and coercion. Community is out there waiting for you, if you can just hold on for one more day, one more hour, or even just for one more minute.”
Robby Starbuck has built his reputation by attacking LGBTQ inclusion. He’s created a documentary called “The War on Children,” where he promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that suggests pesticides are turning your kids gay. He’s argued that Democrats are pro-trans because they want to allow men to follow women and girls in bathrooms. And he’s said that it’s “grooming for adults to have kids carry trans flags at a soccer game.”
But in the last year, Starbuck has become notorious as a key face of America’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, leading boycott campaigns on social media. He’s successfully pressured corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson, to cut down on their DEI programs and withdraw support for Pride events.
Despite having no background in artificial intelligence or content policy, Starbuck has now been brought in by Meta as an AI consultant. To resolve a defamation lawsuit made public in August, the company agreed to bring on the right-wing influencer to advise its AI systems on “political bias” and to reduce the risk of misinformation generated by its chatbot, which was the basis of the lawsuit.
“Meta and Robby Starbuck will work collaboratively in the coming months to continue to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias,” Starbuck and Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan shared in a joint statement.
This move signaled an alarming retreat from the company’s previous effortsto protect queer voices and also signaled a legitimization of narratives that have long sought to erase them.
And it wasn’t an isolated move. It was part of a systematic dismantling of digital civil-rights protections, with consequences that extend far beyond our screens.
Hate Speech Overhaul
In January, Meta—which has a net worth of nearly $1.8 trillion—overhauled its hate-speech policies, allowing language once flagged as harmful to be tolerated under the guise of protecting “discourse.”
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the revised policy guidelines outlined.
This move doesn’t expand free expression; it legitimizes dehumanization. When platforms allow harmful language to flourish under the banner of neutrality or so-called viewpoint diversity, they create environments where targeted marginalized groups are bullied and silenced online. And it may already be happening: Human rights organizations warn that this shift has opened the door to allowing rhetoric portraying LGBTQ people as “abnormal” or “mentally ill.”
And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, transphobia proliferated, with one user writing in the immediate aftermath: “If the first suspect isn’t a democratic lgbtq trans/fag then you’re looking in the wrong spot. Wow I despise that group of humans.”
As a tech founder who has built companies that bring people together online while ensuring those spaces remain safe and welcoming, I understand where priorities should lie when it comes to the user experience. I’m also aware that that experience can become dangerous for users if companies don’t feel like they have an ethical responsibility to protect their most vulnerable users.
In the first paragraph of Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy, the company says one of their principles is to “keep people safe” on their platform: “We recognize all people are equal in dignity and rights. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination. Human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”
The policy also states that the company is committed to respecting human rights, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was officially adopted by the United Nations. According to the U.N., “discrimination against LGBTI people undermines the human rights principles outlined” in that declaration.
As Zuckerberg and Meta dismantle the safeguards for LGBTQ users and greenlight discrimination against transgender people, they are quite literally not practicing what they preach.
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LGBTQ Censorship and Erasure
In addition to the policy shifts, Meta’s supposed neutral moderation has created an alarming false equivalency between the moderation of hate speech and of LGBTQ-affirming language.
For months, posts and content using LGBTQ hashtags—including #LGBTQ, #Gay, #Lesbian and #Transgender—were hidden from teen searches on Instagram, effectively erasing queer visibility from discovery, untilUser Magexposed the practice and pressed the company for an explanation. Meta later walked back the restrictions, calling them an error. “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” a company spokesperson said.
Other instances of LGBTQ erasure were intentional. In January, Pride decorations and queer themes in Messenger—such as the trans and nonbinary chat themes—quietly disappeared. To some, this may seem insignificant. But for our community, especially LGBTQ kids—nearly 40% of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year—the disappearance of these features sent a symbolic message that queer expression is expendable when corporate priorities shift.
Dismantling DEI and Ditching Independent Fact Checkers
Inside the company, the same backpedaling is underway. In January, Meta dismantled its DEI programs. The company eliminated its entire DEI team; ended hiring practices that ensured diverse candidates were considered for open positions; shut down equity and inclusion training programs; and terminated its supplier diversity program that sourced from diverse-owned businesses.
Without internal accountability, external protections inevitably weaken. When companies eliminate the voices that champion vulnerable populations from within, decisions increasingly reflect only majority perspectives.
Another safeguard to fall was in January, when Meta cut ties with independent fact-checkers and weakened moderation frameworks by ending proactive enforcement and raising the threshold for content removal—tools that once slowed the spread of misinformation, hate and violence. “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said in a videoexplaining the changes.
Without them, disinformation targeting LGBTQ people now circulates faster and wider. In fact, leaked training materials from Meta show that comments like “Trans people are freaks” and “Gays are not normal” are among specific content they would now allow to proliferate online.
LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented the fallout. According to GLAAD’s 2025 Make Meta Safe report, 75% of LGBTQ users reported seeing more harmful content on Meta platforms since these changes.
Unfortunately, Meta’s new rules are part of a wider trend among other tech giants that signifies a broader shrinking of digital civil rights protections. By February, YouTube had removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy. And Google eliminated all diversity hiring targets and, in March, scrubbed mentions of diversity from its responsible AI team webpage.
The human stakes are enormous. For many in our community—especially those in hostile environments—social media represents one of the few spaces where they can connect with others and express themselves without fear.
Meta’s changes don’t just affect online discourse; they impact real access to safety and support. Queer-owned businesses that relied on Meta’s advertising tools to reach LGBTQ customers are left navigating uncertain policies. Queer kids discovering their identity are encountering fewer affirming voices and more hostile rhetoric. Trans individuals searching for community find their lifelines weakened.
Rights secured after decades of struggle can be unraveled quickly when massive companies like Meta shift their priorities. Gains that once felt permanent can be undone in a matter of months.
The LGBTQ community has fought too hard to see their digital rights undone by corporate settlements and backroom policy changes. We know that true neutrality doesn’t mean treating all speech as equal—it means recognizing that some speech seeks to silence vulnerable citizens.
We’ve seen this before, from separate but equal policies that claimed neutrality while enforcing segregation; to McCarthyism-era institutions that purged dissenting voices in the name of balance; to media “objectivity” that erased queer voices during the AIDS crisis.
While the medium has changed, the playbook remains the same. And our response must be to stand up, speak out and demand accountability.
This means pressuring Meta through public campaigns, supporting LGBTQ content creators whose reach has been diminished, and pushing for transparent moderation policies. It means calling out right-wing dog whistles like “neutrality” and “viewpoint diversity” for what they are—a convenient masquerade for corporate policies that discriminate against and attack marginalized groups.
Anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing activists are notorious for getting annoyed about almost anything, and the latest addition to the ever-growing list is the Gender Unicorn diagram.
Don’t believe that they’ll get annoyed about anything? Buckle up: we’ve got receipts.
A Christmas advert featuring Black actress Adjoa Andoh as Mrs. Claus, that saw her use they/them pronouns to refer to someone, also sparked the wrath of anti-LGBTQ+ figures, who called it out for being “woke”.
Countless brands, big and small, from Target to Tesco to Tampax, have also faced boycott calls from the right-wing community. But the latest outrage among the group is the realisation of the Gender Unicorn.
What is the Gender Unicorn diagram?
The Gender Unicorn (https://transstudent.org/gender/)
Simply put, the Gender Unicorn Diagram is a graphic that helps people understand the differences between gender identity, gender expression, sex, and attraction.
The graphic, created by Trans Student Educational Resources – a youth-led organisation dedicated to ensuring education is inclusive for all – shows a unicorn on the left-hand side with symbols on that are explained on the right-hand side.
Gender identity, shown on the unicorn through a rainbow-filled thought bubble, is explained as female/woman/girl, male/man/boy, or other gender(s). The diagram also breaks down gender expression, sex assigned at birth, physical attraction, and emotional attraction into distinct categories.
Underneath the definitions of each are further explained. Gender expression/presentation is explained as: “The physical manifestation of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. Many transgender people seek to make their gender expression (how they look) match their gender identity (who they are), rather than their sex assigned at birth.”
Why are so many right-wingers annoyed about it?
A quick search of the term “Gender Unicorn” on social media platforms such as X bring up various videos from right-wingers hitting out at the graphic.
Another commented of the graphic: “One person’s ‘innocuous teaching tool’ is many other people’s insidious grooming material.”
Right-wingers annoyance towards the graphic mimics political moves. The US government has demanded almost every state in the US remove sex education materials referencing trans and non-binary people.
The rope is taut, the stakes are high, and below is a crowd that has, at times, cheered for me to fall. On other days, I am the ringmaster of my quiet revolution, shaping the show, choosing the music, and refusing to let the system dictate the script. In truth, I am always a bit of both; I move between survival and defiance, between navigating oppressive structures and reimagining them entirely.
The mental health system, as it exists, was not designed for us. Its history is deeply tangled with harmful practices and oppressive policies. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1973, in the lifetimes of many practicing clinicians today. Gender diversity remains medicalized and subject to gatekeeping. Conversion therapy, a practice condemned by every major medical organization, is still legally practiced and promoted in many U.S. states. These are not distant relics; they shape policies, insurance coverage, and the way many still think about queer and trans lives.
The failure of the mental health profession to protect our clients has left blood on our hands.
The field itself is rooted in white, cisgender, heterosexual norms—frameworks that have long framed queerness as deviant, dangerous, or defective. This history is not a neutral backdrop but the ground we walk on. Even now, “healthy” and “normal” are often defined in ways that exclude us.
When I walk into the therapy room, I do so knowing that the profession I practice has a history of labeling my very existence as pathological. I am a queer, neurodivergent, cisgender woman trained in institutions that, up until recently, sought to erase people like me. That contradiction lives in me. I do not try to shed it; I use it. It keeps me alert to the harm my clients carry. It fuels my commitment to build spaces where they do not have to fight to be seen.
For me, therapy is not neutral work. It is an act of reclamation.
To practice LGBTQ+ affirming therapy is to push back against decades of pathologization, exclusion, and control. It is to stand in the face of a system and say, with clarity: We are not broken. The system is. After more than a decade of working in nonprofit and community mental health in New York City, I knew I wanted to create something different. I had seen too many clients forced to fit themselves into narrow definitions of care, explaining and justifying their identities to providers who should have been safe. My clients had been tokenized and ostracized simply for being who they were. I didn’t want to merely critique the system; I desired to change it. I wanted to build a new kind of space.
And, so, I did.
LGBTQ+ affirming therapy is built on the right to be seen, not fixed. It rejects the idea that healing means conforming to cisheteronormative standards. Instead, it validates identities, desires, and ways of being as inherently worthy, not despite queerness, but because queerness is part of our wholeness.
In this space I’ve carved, therapy becomes more than coping skills and symptom management. It becomes a place to rest from the constant negotiations of daily life, to rewrite internalized narratives, to explore pleasure without shame. It becomes a space where survival is honored, but not at the expense of the ceiling. Where thriving, dreaming, and imagining new futures are equally part of the work.
Genuine affirming care is trauma-informed, consent-based, and intersectional. It holds that mental health cannot be separated from systems of oppression or from the ways race, gender, class, disability, and sexuality intersect. It honors chosen family as legitimate kinship, celebrates resilience as much as it grieves loss, and understands that joy itself can be a form of resistance.
The shift from “treating” queer and trans people to affirming them is more than a professional stance. It is a political one. It interrupts the legacy of harm by refusing to replicate it. It acknowledges the history of psychiatry and psychology as tools of control. It insists instead on using them as tools for liberation.
And this work is not just for my clients. It is for me, too. Each time I sit across from someone and affirm the fullness of who they are, I reclaim a piece of my own belonging in this profession. Each time we acknowledge that the harm resides in the system, not in us, the playing field shifts slightly.
Being a queer therapist means holding history in one hand and possibility in the other. It means balancing on that tightrope, aware of the danger, while also daring to step into the ring and change the show entirely. It means building something worth inheriting: a space where queerness is not just tolerated or accepted, but celebrated and at the center.
This is what keeps me walking, even on the days when the rope feels impossibly thin. Because every step is a refusal to disappear. Every session is an act of resistance. And every life affirmed here is proof that the system can be remade one client at a time.
Whitney C. Coulson, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker, writer, and founder of Moodlab Psychotherapy, a boutique group practice specializing in affirming care for LGBTQ+ populations, individuals with neurodiversity, and those from marginalized backgrounds.
As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush, we have collectively spent decades in service as the Nation’s Doctor. We took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans.
Today, in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.
Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans. The nation deserves a health and human services secretary who is committed to scientific integrity and can restore morale and trust in our public health agencies.
Read the full op-ed. Signees: Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello, and David Satcher.
In Pennsylvania, two federal judges appointed by President Barack Obama are now at the center of a fight over whether the U.S. government can seize the private medical records of transgender youth. The battle, two legal cases unfolding in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, pits families and hospitals against the Department of Justice and raises fundamental questions about constitutional privacy, federal power, and the future of gender-affirming health care in the United States.
The cases stem from a series of administrative subpoenas issued by the Justice Department this summer as part of the Trump administration’s escalating campaign against gender-affirming care. Families and their attorneys argue that the government is not attempting to root out fraud, as the DOJ claims, but to intimidate providers and chill access to care that remains legal in Pennsylvania and endorsed by every major medical association.
Two courts, two judges, one question
On September 22, six families filed a motion to quash in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The case is before Judge Mark A. Kearney, who joined the bench in 2014. On September 24, four families brought a parallel challenge in the Western District. That case is before Judge Cathy Bissoon, who has served since 2011. Both judges, appointed by Obama, will now decide whether the Department of Justice may compel hospitals to disclose years of individual patients’ private medical records to the government.
The subpoenas demand extraordinary categories of information, including patient names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, home addresses, details of parents and guardians, and clinical notes documenting treatment decisions. They also require intake forms, consent paperwork, and parental authorizations for puberty blockers and hormone therapy. In effect, they cover every minor treated for gender dysphoria at the hospitals in the last five years.
A July crackdown
The subpoenas in Pennsylvania are part of a much larger national dragnet. On July 9, the Justice Department announced that it had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in what it called “transgender medical procedures on children.” At the time, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said, “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.” All major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support gender-affirming care as evidence-based, safe, and effective medical treatment that is necessary and often lifesaving.
The DOJ said the investigations focused on potential health care fraud and false statements, but advocates saw the announcement as proof that the federal government was targeting providers not for legitimate misconduct, but because of the type of care they provide.
“If our Constitution means anything”
Mimi McKenzie, legal director at the Public Interest Law Center, which represents families in both Pennsylvania cases, told The Advocate that the subpoenas must be understood as part of this larger strategy. “If our Constitution means anything, it means that the federal government can’t rifle through your child’s medical records in order to intimidate you,” she said.
McKenzie warned that even if prosecutions never follow, the chilling effect is already profound. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia continues to treat patients while challenging its subpoena in court. However, UPMC announced on June 30 that it would no longer provide gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19, citing liability concerns. “Families are scared because the government has equated this care to child abuse,” McKenzie explained. “Even if they don’t follow through, the intimidation alone disrupts care.”
In Washington, D.C., the Federal Trade Commission quietly held a workshop on July 9 titled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.” The event, widely criticized by public health experts and LGBTQ+ advocates, assembled anti-trans attorneys, so-called detransitioned activists, and conservative medical voices to argue that care for transgender youth may constitute unfair or deceptive practices. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson opened the workshop by accusing parts of the medical establishment of removing age minimums from treatment guidelines under political pressure. The event repositioned gender care not as health care but as potential consumer fraud. Health care policy experts called the FTC event a “government-sponsored disinformation campaign.”
The July DOJ press release announcing the subpoenas echoed earlier executive orders from President Donald Trump, including one called Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, which instructed the attorney general to investigate gender-affirming care. DOJ guidance soon directed prosecutors to treat the care as a form of child abuse, and to collaborate with state attorneys general in pursuing cases.
After the U.S. Supreme Courtruled against trans people in Skrmetti this summer, allowing state legislatures to ban gender-affirming care for minors, states like Tennessee implemented a complete prohibition on this care.
In April, the White House called “the sinister threat of gender ideology” one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse in America.
Courts elsewhere have begun pushing back. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Massachusetts quashed a subpoena to Boston Children’s Hospital, calling it a “fishing expedition” and a product of bad faith. The Pennsylvania families cite that ruling to argue that the DOJ’s campaign is legally indefensible.
Beyond trans youth
The implications extend far beyond Pennsylvania. Courts in the Third Circuit have long recognized heightened constitutional protections for medical, reproductive, and mental health records. If the government can demand disclosure here, advocates warn, then no medical relationship is safe from political targeting.
“There is nothing other than the courts and public pressure to stop the weaponization of the Department of Justice,” McKenzie said. “What is really to stop them from seeking other types of records — reproductive health, mental health — of groups of people they don’t like?”
Kearney has ordered the DOJ to respond to the Philadelphia families’ motion by October 6. Bissoon’s case in Pittsburgh is just beginning. Both courts are expected to move quickly, as administrative subpoena challenges typically do, McKenzie said.
For now, the families pressing their cases under pseudonyms emphasize that their fight is not just about their own children; it is also about the children of others.
“It’s important that transgender youth and their parents know that there are people out there fighting for their constitutional right to privacy,” McKenzie said.
Three of the nation’s largest public school districts stand to lose $24 million after missing a Trump administration deadline to agree to change policies supporting transgender students, officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights had given New York City Schools, Chicago Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia until Tuesday to agree to stop giving students access to locker rooms and restrooms corresponding with their gender identity or risk losing funding for specialty magnet schools.
In letters to the districts Sept. 16, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, said the practice violates Title IX, which forbids discrimination based on sex in education. Because the districts did not agree by Tuesday to take remedial action detailed in Trainor’s letters, the department said, Trainor will not certify that they are in compliance with federal civil rights law, making them ineligible for the grants.
Millions in grants at stake
Fairfax County schools will lose $3.4 million in Magnet School Assistance Program funding in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. About $5.8 million will be withheld from Chicago schools and community school districts in New York City will lose about $15 million, according to the Education Department.
“The Department will not rubber-stamp civil rights compliance for New York, Chicago, and Fairfax while they blatantly discriminate against students based on race and sex,” department spokesperson Julie Hartman said via email. “These are public schools, funded by hardworking American families, and parents have every right to expect an excellent education—not ideological indoctrination masquerading as `inclusive’ policy.'”
Additional policies under scrutiny
Along with restricting access to restrooms and locker rooms, the department also demanded that New York City and Chicago schools issue public statements saying they will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs.
Chicago schools were further told to abolish a program that provides remedial academic resources to Black students, which Trainor labeled “textbook racial discrimination.” School officials estimated a total of about $8 million would be lost for initiatives that have expanded staffing, technology and enrichment opportunities like field trips and after-school programming.
Chicago education officials faulted the department for failing to provide evidence that its students were being harmed and said it was acting outside of its own procedures for complaints.
“Our mission, programs, and policies not only meet our obligation to students, but they also plainly comply with the law,” acting general counsel Elizabeth Barton said in the district’s response to Trainor.
The Education Department denied requests from New York City and Chicago for more time to respond to the demands. It was unclear whether Fairfax County schools made such a request. The district did not respond to requests for information.
In his letter to New York City schools, Trainor cited several of the district’s policies, including one saying that transgender students cannot be required to use an alternative facility, such as a single-occupancy bathroom, instead of a regular restroom. That means trans students “are given unqualified access to female intimate spaces,” he wrote.
Each of the districts was told they would lose funding unless they agreed to rescind policies that violate Title IX and adopt “biology-based definitions of the words male and female” in practices relating to Title IX.
“Cutting this funding — which invests in specialized curricula, afterschool education, and summer learning — harms not only the approximately 8,500 students this program currently benefits, but all of our students from underserved communities,” New York City schools said in a statement. “If the federal government pulls this funding, that means canceled courses and shrinking enrichment. That’s a consequence our city can’t afford and our students don’t deserve.”
Attention from New York City mayoral candidates
The topic came up on the campaign trail in New York City’s contentious mayoral election in recent days.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, raised eyebrows when he said at an unrelated news conference that he would like to look into changing the policy if it “is allowing boys and girls to use the same facility at the same time.” The remarks came days after the Trump administration’s letter, though he has insisted they were unrelated.
Adams’ comments were swiftly condemned by the race’s Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, who called them “completely at odds with the values of our city.”
Adams said this week that he would like to change the city’s policy — but also that he did not have the power. The state’s human rights law also allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
On Wednesday, Adams’ office said the administration was reviewing options, including litigation.
“The federal government is threatening to defund our children’s education as a tool to change policies it doesn’t like,” City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement. “While Mayor Adams may not agree with every rule or policy, we will always stand up to protect critical resources for our city’s 1 million students.”
The Trump administration’s campaign to extinguish transgender visibility has moved into the mechanics of national security, stripping transgender people from federal intelligence bulletins that are supposed to keep all Americans safe.
As first reported by investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein, federal threat assessments drafted ahead of Pride Month this year omitted any mention of transgender people, instead referring to the “LGB+ community.” Klippenstein, a Washington-based reporter known for exposing government secrecy, obtained the documents through public records requests and published them on Wednesday. Historically, these assessments used “LGBTQ+” or “LGBTQIA+.” The sudden absence of the “T” is part of a broader project by Republicans to erase transgender people from public recognition.
One of the documents Klippenstein obtained is an 11-page Joint Threat Assessment coauthored by multiple New York law enforcement agencies. According to Klippenstein, it warns of potential attacks on Pride events across the country, including New York City, by ideologically motivated offenders. The report sketches out risks ranging from improvised explosives to intimidation campaigns. But throughout, it uses only “LGB+ community,” never acknowledging transgender people, even though trans individuals face the highest rates of hate-motivated violence, Klippenstein reports.
The second document, a two-page DHS memo dated May 16, 2025, was circulated to state and local law enforcement one day before the World Pride kickoff in Washington, D.C. That bulletin warns that “violent extremists motivated by a range of anti-LGB+ grievances probably view upcoming Pride events … as potential targets for attacks,” citing tactics like vehicle rammings, explosives, and suicide drones.
The first page and most of the second outline risks and recommend mitigation steps such as crowd control, police sweeps, barricades, and awareness campaigns. The final quarter of page two is redacted, but what remains visible is striking: not once does the word “transgender” appear.
The omission comes as anti-trans violence grows. According to GLAAD’s ALERT Desk, between May 2024 and May 2025, there were 932 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents nationwide, averaging 2.5 a day. Over half, 52 percent, or 485 cases, specifically targeted transgender and gender-nonconforming people. The report documented 84 injuries and 10 deaths, eight of them people of color. Compared to the previous year, anti-trans incidents rose 14 percent.
Amid the increase in violence, earlier this year, the National Park Service altered the description of the Stonewall National Monument to remove “transgender” and replace “LGBTQ+” with “LGB.” The change sparked protests outside the Stonewall Inn, where demonstrators declared, “Stonewall is transgender history,” and invoked Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans women of color who were central to the 1969 uprising that defined the movement to achieve equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. Lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents New York, demanded that transgender references be restored.
The intelligence reports align with one of President Donald Trump’s earliest executive orders this term. The directive, signed on the first day of Trump’s second term, rescinded federal acknowledgment of transgender identities, declaring that the government would recognize only two sexes — male and female — based on “immutable biological” characteristics at birth. Agencies were instructed to strip references to gender identity from policies, forms, and records.
Sex refers to biological traits, including chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. Gender is a deeply held social and personal identity, which may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth. All major medical associations affirm the difference, with advocates noting that conflating the two erases transgender people’s lived reality and undermines both medical care and civil rights.
Following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in early September, Trump allies began labeling transgender suspects “nihilist violent extremists” — a baseless framing now being circulated by influential Republicans. The administration has erased LGBTQ+ people from other public-facing government websites and documents, including within the Department of Health and Human Services.
