The conservative Justice said during a recent appearance at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C.that he would not follow court precedent “if I find it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I think we should demand that, no matter what the case is, that it has more than just a simple theoretical basis,” Thomas said, via legal news outlet Above the Law. “[If it’s] totally stupid, and that’s what they’ve decided, you don’t go along with it just because it’s decided. You could go up to the engine room and find that it’s an orangutan driving. And you’re going to follow that? I think we owe our fellow citizens more than that.”
“I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel,” he continued. “And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion when the conservative majority created by Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 that the court should revisit and overrule decisions that prevent state restrictions on contraception, marriage equality, sodomy, and other private consensual sex acts, calling the rulings “demonstrably erroneous.”
Thomas was one of the four dissenting votes in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 ruling in which the Supreme Court determined that laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying are unconstitutional. While the court has made no official move to reconsider the case, nine states have recently introduced resolutionsasking the court to hear it again. None have yet passed, and even if they were to, the resolutions are nonbinding — meaning they carry no legal weight, and the court is not obligated to hear them.
Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who was sued by a same-sex couple for refusing to issue them marriage license, has also appealed the verdict against her to the Supreme Court, and included in her filing a petition to overturn Obergefell. The court has not agreed to hear her case, and doing so would not inherently reverse marriage equality.
If Obergefell is reversed, marriage equality would be outlawed in 31 states. Marriages between same-sex couples would still be recognized federally under the Respect for Marriage Act. Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, the act mandates that the federal government recognizes same-sex and interracial marriages, and that all states recognize those performed in other states.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett also recently weighed in on the effort to overturn marriage equality. She called the right to marry “fundamental” in her new book, writing that “the court has held that the rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control, and raise children are fundamental, but the rights to do business, commit suicide, and obtain abortion are not.”
Over 68 percent of Americans support marriage equality, according to a recent poll from Gallup, including a record 88 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of Independents, and only 41 percent of Republicans – the highest recorded partisan divide since Gallup began polling opinions on marriage equality in 1996.
While Barrett did not directly address her views on marriage equality during her confirmation hearings, she had previously suggested it should be left up to the states. She also recently told CBS News that the law is “not just an opinion poll.”
“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” Barrett said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”
Last month, it was reported that the Supreme Court will formally consider a petition for a case calling on them to overturn their 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic ruling that made gay marriage legal nationwide. The petition comes from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has made headlines and been embroiled in legal battles since she refused to sign marriage licenses for gay couples.
While Davis has been fighting against gay marriage since it was made legal, her lawyers have been doing it for longer. Davis is being represented by Liberty Counsel, a far-right Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group.
Since its inception in 1989, the group has opposed gay rights causes, including fighting against gay marriage, the legalization of homosexuality and bansonconversion therapy. In one instance, the group’s Facebook cover photoreferenced the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which reads, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
When asked about the cover photo, the group responded in an email that “Liberty Counsel has never promoted or condoned the killing of anyone or asked anyone to ‘like’ any quote about killing gays.”
Experts say Liberty Counsel is arguably more powerful than ever in 2025, fueled by publicity from Davis’ case and the opportunity to capitalize on a moment when American politics are stacked toward the right-wing—something that could upend gay marriage.
“The alignments will never be as favorable as they are at this moment,” Anne Nelson, author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” told Uncloseted Media. “That’s why they’re going for broke.”
History
Liberty Counsel was founded by preacher turned lawyer Mat Staver and his wife Anita.
Mat Staver, who now serves as the chairman, senior pastor and primary spokesperson for the group, authored the 2004 book “Same-sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk,” where he wrote that “homosexuality is rooted in fractured emotions” and “a common thread in virtually every case is some sort of sexual or emotional brokenness.”
While the organization started operations solely in Florida, Mat Staver told the Orlando Sentinel shortly after Liberty Counsel launched that the group “would be a Christian antithesis to the ACLU” and that he “always felt the Lord calling [him] to combine [ministry and law] together.”
Liberty Counsel was active throughout the 1990s, with a focus on First Amendment cases, but Staver and his group didn’t gain national attention until 1994, when he argued before the Supreme Court for a case that challenged the constitutionality of a Florida court ruling that barred anti-abortion protests outside of a clinic. Some parts of the ruling were successfully overturned while others remained in place.
After that, the group built up a reputation for taking up cases related to religion in schools and other public institutions, including one instance where they threatened a lawsuit against one school for changing the lyrics of a Christmas song in a school play.
Attacking Gay Rights
After the turn of the century, Liberty Counsel became more active on gay issues. In 2003, they filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that decriminalized gay sex nationwide, arguing in favor of state laws banning it by saying that “deregulating human sexual relations will erode the institution of marriage.”
When California was taken to court over Proposition 8, a 2008 state constitutional amendment that sought to ban gay marriage in the state, Liberty Counsel attempted to be among the lawyers defending it. The group publicly criticized fellow far-right Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom for, in their view, arguing the case poorly.
One lawyer for Liberty Counsel also disagreed with legal positions taken by one pro-Prop 8 lawyer, who reportedly refused to argue that homosexuality is an “illness or disorder.” In their amicus brief in support of the proposition, Liberty Counsel argued that homosexuality “presents serious physical, emotional, mental, and other health-related risks.”
And in 2015, just months before the Obergefellruling, the group offered to represent Alabama judges who refused to perform gay marriages after a state ban was overturned.
Staver, right, with Kim Davis after her release from jail in 2015 (CNN)
Once gay marriage became legal nationwide, Liberty Counsel took up Kim Davis’ case, which brought them more media attention than ever before.
“Kim Davis was a boon to Liberty Counsel,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at challenging the far right. “[She] got them a huge amount of publicity, and I think they’ve really grown since they first took up her case.”
Much of the earned media from the Davis case, however, was negative. Liberty Counsel received criticism for encouraging Davis to continue refusing gay marriage licenses in violation of a court order. And even a Fox News panel of legal experts called Davis a “hypocrite” and Mat Staver’s legal arguments “stunningly obtuse” and “ridiculously stupid.”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel took issue with criticism of the group’s past litigation, writing that “[they] have 40 wins [they] briefed or argued at the US Supreme Court, including a 9-0 win in Shurtleff v. City of Boston.”
Liberty Counsel has created their own media, including a daily 11-minute radio broadcast, Faith and Freedom. Launched in 2010, the program is syndicated on 145 stations across the country and frequently contains anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including assertions that LGBTQ-inclusive policies in the Boy Scouts create “a playground for pedophiles”; that gay people “know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive”; and that gay people are “not controlled by reason,” but rather “controlled by … lust.”
And after being boosted in popularity by Kim Davis, a 2016 CBS News investigation found that the group had worked with lawmakers in at least 20 states to author anti-LBGTQ bills, including trans bathroom bans.
“They’re pretty much anti-LGBT in every way you can be,” Montgomery told Uncloseted Media. “Staver is pretty shameless in lying about gay people and the laws.”
Why Now?
Photo by Fred Schilling
Davis’ case has fallen in and out of public attention over the years, with the Supreme Court rejecting a previous petition in 2020. Despite this, Liberty Counsel has remained confident in the case’s potential to upend gay marriage. In 2023, the group told their supporters in an email that they planned to use Davis’ case to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. These comments came a year after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas expressed interest in reconsidering Obergefell in his opinion on the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“[The far right have] been working for decades to get their pieces in place, so at this particular moment, looking at the chessboard, they’ve got a critical mass of conservative states with Republicans in the state house, they’ve got the White House, they’ve got both houses of Congress, and they’ve got a majority on the Supreme Court,” says Nelson. “In a year, that could change.”
Increasing Notoriety
Montgomery says that Liberty Counsel’s popularity and influence has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, when the group gained traction by opposing restrictions on churches meeting during COVID lockdowns. During this period, Staver claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are designed to “prevent people from procreating.”
“One of the ways that [Staver] has boosted his visibility and influence was riding that parade, which a number of people on the religious right did, and took advantage of the resentment of public health restrictions,” says Montgomery.
Since then, the group has falsely claimed that the Respect for Marriage Act “would allow pedophiles to marry children,” and Staver wrote in a newsletter that “the LGBTQ agenda seeks nothing less than to eliminate all religious freedom rights that might make them feel bad about their choices.”
In the meantime, affiliates of the group have been cozying up to the Supreme Court. In 2022, a representative of the Liberty Counsel-owned D.C. ministry Faith & Liberty was caught bragging about praying with Supreme Court justices just weeks after the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Staver told Rolling Stone these allegations are “entirely untrue.”
In his majority opinion on the case, Justice Alito cited an amicus brief filed by Liberty Counsel where the group argues that “the birth control and abortion movements are racist and eugenic.”
Part of a Bigger Picture
Liberty Counsel’s website reports that it generated nearly $28 million in revenue between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. While their internal team has roughly 40 employees listed on LinkedIn, they have claimed to have anywhere from 90 to 700 affiliate attorneys across the country. Some of the group’s larger and more consistent donors reportedly include fracking baronFarris Wilks; the Christian TV network Good Life Broadcasting; and Liberty University, where Staver previously worked as dean of the law school.
“The big Christian nationalist and plutocratic donors understand that the Supreme Court, and the judiciary in general, are central to their aims … so over the past few decades they spent enormous sums grooming and promoting candidates for the judiciary whose interpretation of the law is favorable to their interests,” Katherine Stewart, an author and expert on religious nationalism, told Uncloseted Media in an email. “Liberty Counsel has successfully positioned itself as one of the players in that space. It only picks up a slice from the total pie, but the pie is so well-funded that even a slice is rich indeed.”
Beyond this, Liberty Counsel is affiliated with a number of other right-wing groups, several of which operate directly under the group’s umbrella. Staver holds leadership positions in other conservative groups, including Salt & Light Council and National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference—the former of which has been outspokenly anti-LGBTQ. Liberty Counsel is also a member of the Remnant Alliance, a coalition of groups known for coordinating to elect Christian nationalist candidates to local school boards. A leaked membership directory from 2020 also listed Staver as a member of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group that includes Republican politicians and major leaders of Christian right organizations, though Staver told Uncloseted Media that Liberty Counsel and the Council for National Policy are not affiliated.
Nelson says connections like these allow different groups on the far right to coordinate together on anti-LGBTQ policies.
“They’ll have coordinated messaging about whatever campaign they’re launching at the moment. And it’s highly coordinated, as in the same story, the same language, the same spokespeople. It’s really quite impressive. And so all of a sudden there’ll be a story that will just erupt.”
The Council for National Policy did not respond to a request for comment
When Liberty Counsel filed its most recent petition for Davis’ case to the Supreme Court, multiple right-wing media outlets whose leadership have been members of the Council for National Policy quickly covered the story with a favorable spin, including Salem Media Group, the WashingtonTimesand WorldNetDaily. And earlier this year, Staver networked at the National Religious Broadcasters conference, where he discussed plans to overturn Obergefell.
Montgomery says that this coordination is especially powerful because different groups are able to influence different spheres. For example, while Liberty Counsel pressures the courts, a group like Salt & Light Council works to activate supporters in ministry.
“They have this broader vision of wanting to change the culture and change the country,” he says. “They are all different approaches to moving the country in the direction they want: courts, legislative advocacy, lobbying, organizing, and media outreach.”
Nelson says the far right’s recent legal success is thanks in part to the influxof right-wing judges since the start of Trump’s first term.
“It’s worked initially with trying to get local and political opposition to these laws, and it’s linked to getting the appointments of judges who’ve had to pass a litmus test,” she says. “And then [their strategy involves] mounting the lawsuits, starting usually at the state level and working their way up the court system, specializing in states where they believe they’ll have sympathetic judges. … It’s gaming [the system].”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel says this characterization does not describe their litigation strategy.
What Does This Mean for Marriage Equality?
Despite all of this, many legal experts believe that this latest challenge to marriage equality is a long shot. Liberty Counsel’s arguments were largely rejected by a federal appeals court panel earlier this year, and several of the justices have shown little to no interest in revisiting Obergefell. Just this month, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett
A GOP candidate who was caught following a nonbinary adult performer online dropped out of the race for Wisconsin governor on Friday, about a week after a local paper reported on his online activity.
“As a result of our politics today, I cannot focus on the issues I know will turn Wisconsin around. I have come to the conclusion I do not have a path to the nomination,” business owner Bill Berrien said in a statement, which attacked the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for reporting the story.
“It was a major attack piece and we confirmed opposition research started in January of this year, if not earlier,” he said. “And for what? For reading! Nothing illegal, nothing unethical, and nothing immoral. Just reading. Wouldn’t you want your political and business leaders (and all of society, frankly) to be widely read and thoughtful and aware of different perspectives and ideas? Yet, when a supposedly major metropolitan newspaper condemns someone for reading, we have ourselves a problem.”
The Journal-Sentinel reported earlier this month that Berrien followed nonbinary, queer adult performer Jiz Lee on the blogging platform Medium, as well as several other sex- and polyamory-positive accounts. Some of the articles that he “clapped for” – i.e., liked – on the platform included “My Husband Loves Watching Me Flirt with Another Man” and “‘Ethical Porn’ Starts When We Pay for It.”
But on the campaign trail, he attacked LGBTQ+ rights.
“[Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony] Evers vetoed a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports and calls Wisconsin moms ‘inseminated persons,’” Berrien says in one ad. “Enough!”
“Take it from a dad and a coach, I’ll keep boys out of our daughters’ sports and locker rooms.”
Lee, the nonbinary performer he followed, wrote about the matter in a post to Bluesky, where they called out Berrien’s “hypocrisy.”
“It’s okay to follow trans porn stars,” they wrote. “It’s okay to read articles about sex and relationships. What’s not okay is the hypocrisy of backing forceful legislation that restricts what people, trans and otherwise, can do with their own bodies. That is shameful.”
Berrien’s campaign didn’t deny that he owned the account that followed the posts and content creators in question. Instead, they said it’s “absurd” to say that Berrien knew about the authors’ “personal choices.” However, someone logged in to Berrien’s account and unfollowed 19 people and publications after the Journal-Sentinel inquired about Berrien’s online activities, but before their report was published.
“When you brought this up, he logged in on Tuesday and started messing around, which resulted in some folks being deleted,” a campaign spokesperson said.
Two other Republicans are left in the GOP primary for Wisconsin governor: Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann. There are several Democrats running in their primary for the position, including Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez.
Berrien’s criticisms of Evers included that he “calls Wisconsin moms ‘inseminated persons.’” That is referring to a controversy from earlier this year about legal language used in the Wisconsin budget to refer to people who undergo IVF treatments, a reproductive technology where a person is literally inseminated.
His other criticism of Evers was that the governor “vetoed a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports.” That is referring to a 2024 veto of a trans sports ban. Boys do not play in girls’ sports in Wisconsin, and the veto of that bill didn’t change that. Republicans wanted to ban certain girls – specifically, trans girls – from playing with other girls.
Sadie Schreiner, a runner on Rochester Institute of Technology’s track and field team during the 2023-2024 season, said she was turned away from the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter races at SUNY Geneseo’s Early Invitational in March. That was despite Schreiner having qualifying times to make her eligible to race.
“As stated in the complaint, the track meet at issue was open to members of the public. SUNY Geneseo violated New York state law when it excluded Sadie because she is a transgender woman,” said Schreiner’s lawyer, Susie Cirilli, according to Geneseo’s NBC affiliate.
Schreiner signed up to compete in the invitational as an independent athlete, not as a representative of her school. Because of that, her lawsuit claims, she should have avoided problems with a new NCAA rule instituted in February that bars transgender women from competing in girls or women’s sporting events.
The NCAA instituted the rule after President Donald Trump signed an executive order withholding federal funding from academic institutions that allow trans women to compete with cisgender women.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said in February it was important to have consistent rules at sanctioned tournaments.
“We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions. To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard,” Baker said in a statement at the time.
But Schreiner’s suit alleges the restrictions put NCAA tournaments in New York out of compliance with state law. Citing the New York State Human Rights Law, the complaint argues state statutes take precedence over NCAA rules.
Of note, a Nassau County judge declined earlier this year to throw out a local ordinance that prohibited transgender participation in women’s sports, despite a legal challenge asserting that the ban went against New York’s human rights protections.
In 2024, Schreiner won the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter races at the invitational.
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 GLO Center, an LGBTQ+ community center in Springfield, Missouri, closed for the day Monday after receiving a threat of violence, but it will go on with a Pride event Saturday as planned.
Executive Director Aaron Schekorra found two bullets on the ground when he opened the center Monday. “Scratched on them — there’s a word on each of them. One of them says in all caps, ‘DIE,’ and the other one says a slur for queer people, and it starts with an f, that I’d rather not repeat on the radio,” he told public radio station KCUR.
“We realized that these were left — they were left intentionally in front of our building using language that’s meant to attack our community,” he said.
The center shut down for the day, but its board and staff decided Tuesday evening to go ahead with Pride on C-Street, a festival on Commercial Street, a main thoroughfare in the city, the Springfield News-Leader reports.
“Fear wants to isolate us. Pride brings us back together,” said a statementposted on the center’s social media pages. “We refuse to let intimidation decide how we gather, care, or celebrate.”
The center planned Pride on C-Street “after the record-breaking success of Ozarks Pridefest this summer,” the News-Leader reports.
Pride on C-Street will be a “block-party-meets-street-fair that celebrates the history, heart, and future of our community,” the GLO Center’s website for the event says. There will be vendor booths, food and drink, and entertainment by several performers. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Security will be tight, and the center has posted safety tips for attendees.
Police are investigating the Monday incident, but no arrests have been made.
Schekorra has received threats against himself, but when there’s a threat against the GLO Center, “it is also kind of a threat against our community and our identities,” he told KCUR.
“So it’s important that we let folks know so they can make the best decision for themselves … at the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for our community,” he added.
Following a playbook from Hungary and Russia’s leaders, Slovakia’s populist government on Friday passed an illiberal ragbag of measures in a constitutional amendment that defines sex as binary, bans adoption by same-sex couples, outlaws surrogacy, and asserts the E.U. member’s “national sovereignty in cultural and ethical matters.”
Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose coalition of populist, leftist, and nationalist parties has faced mounting demonstrations in the country’s capital, Bratislava, promoted the amendment as a bulwark against liberal ideology that was “spreading like cancer” in the central European state.
His populist-nationalist government argued the amendment was necessary to protect “traditional values.”
Fico said he would celebrate with a shot of liquor following the amendment’s knife-edge passage in the 150-seat Slovak National Council on Friday.
“This isn’t a little dam, or just a regular dam – this is a great dam against progressivism,” he declared to followers.
Fico leads a precarious coalition of parties across the political spectrum. His own Smer-Social Democracy party has morphed into a nationalist party far removed from the progressive values of Europe’s center-left mainstream that it was founded on.
Smer was suspended from the Party of European Socialists in 2023 after forming a coalition government with the country’s far-right Slovak National Party. It’s expected to be expelled at a gathering of European Socialists next month.
“The Slovak constitution has fallen victim to Robert Fico’s plan to dismantle the opposition and divert attention from the real problems of society, as well as the austerity measures he had to pass,” Beata Balagova, editor-in-chief of the Slovak daily SME, told the BBC.
“Fico does not genuinely care about gender issues, the ban on surrogate motherhood, or even adoptions by LGBTQ people,” she added.
Fico has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin four times in the last year.
Passage of the amendment was in doubt as late as Thursday.
The amendment required a three-fifths majority in the 150-seat National Council, or 90 votes, while Fico’s coalition only comprises 78 members. In the end, 12 opposition members, including several from former Prime Minister Igor Matovič’s movement, added their votes.
Igor Matovič described them as traitors.
Amnesty International said the vote brings Slovakia’s legal system closer to the authoritarian governments of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Putin’s Russia.
“Today, the Slovak government chose to follow the lead of countries, such as Hungary, whose policies have led to an erosion of human rights,” it said in a statement.
Legal scholars in Slovakia have said that the amendment enshrining the primacy of the Slovak constitution over E.U. law sets up a direct challenge to the European Union and will doubtless lead to a showdown.
“Seeking to disapply specific rights because they touch upon ‘national identity’ would be fundamentally incompatible with the Slovak Republic’s international obligations,” said Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty before the vote.
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.
The five public universities within the Texas Tech University System must “recognize only two human sexes” in their classroom instruction, according to a memo released Thursday by the system’s chancellor.
“Therefore, while recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment,” Mitchell wrote. “As a system, our role is to provide clarity and guidance to administration, ensuring that each university fulfills its legal obligations.”
The five universities within the system, which collectively have more than 60,000 students, are Texas Tech University, Angelo State University, Midwestern State University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech University Health Science Center El Paso. The universities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mitchell directed faculty to review all instructional materials and adjust them accordingly.
“I recognize that members of our community may hold differing personal views on these matters,” Mitchell wrote. “Regardless, in your role as a state employee, compliance with the law is required, and I trust in your professionalism to carry out these responsibilities in a manner that reflects well on our universities.”
Though the Texas law declares that “an individual is one of two sexes,” it also recognizes that people can be born with a disorder of sex development or intersex, meaning having sex characteristics that do not fit binary definitions of male or female. The Texas law says intersex people “are not considered to belong to a third sex” and should receive “accommodations” in accordance with state and federal law, but does not say what those are. The chancellor’s office did not respond to a request regarding how the Texas Tech University System’s medical and nursing schools would navigate teaching about intersex people under the memo.
Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, said in a statement that limiting what information students have access to harms them.
“Free speech is the backbone of American Democracy,” Pritchett said. “We cannot stand idly by while the lives of our trans neighbors are erased from the history books. Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, the melting pot of ideas, faiths, and identities is what makes us great. Students deserve universities where professors fearlessly observe and question our world—limiting classroom discussion and research topics will only degrade our state’s standing in the world of academia. Freedom cannot exist in a state where even our ideas are policed.”
In the memo, Mitchell added that “recent developments at universities across Texas … have highlighted the importance of understanding these compliance obligations.” He appeared to be referring to a controversy at Texas A&M earlier this month, in which a student recorded herself objecting to an English lecture related to gender identity. The student argued that such instruction was “illegal” due to Trump’s executive order recognizing only two sexes.
After public backlash, the university removed the head of the English department and a dean from their administrative positions and fired the professor, Melissa McCoul.
When asked for comment, McCoul directed NBC News to her attorney, who said McCoul has appealed her termination and is exploring further legal action.
Texas A&M’s president, Mark A. Welsh III, stepped down days later but did not say whether the controversy was a factor.
“When I was first appointed as President of Texas A&M University, I told then Chancellor John Sharp and our Board of Regents that I would serve as well as I possibly could until it was time for someone else to take over,” Welsh said in a statement issued earlier this month. “Over the past few days, it’s become clear that now is that time.”
The Trump Administration has lost yet another battle with one of its most formidable foes: the arts.
The right has long self-identified as the protector of free speech, except when that speech has to do with race, gender, sexuality, queerness, science, (non-Christian) religion, and anything else the Trump regime deems seditious, such as being critical of the government.
Four plaintiffs — Rhode Island Latino Arts, National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive and Theatre Communications Group — sued federal officials following the signing of an executive order which directed the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to disfavor grant applications that “promote gender ideology.” Artists, represented by the ACLU, argued this provision violated the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the Fifth Amendment.
On Sept. 19, Senior U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith sided with the plaintiffs’ first two claims, denouncing “a viewpoint-based standard of review to Plaintiffs that disfavors applications deemed ‘to promote gender ideology’” — a catch-all dogwhistle describing depictions of gender and sexuality outside rigid heterosexual marriage. The court “vacates and sets aside Defendants’ current plan to implement the Executive Order.”
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency created by Congress to fund and shepherd great American art. The problem seems to be that Trump wants the agency to discriminate against artists who do not focus on straight, cisgender white men — prioritizing political virtue signaling over actual merit and talent, and stymieing the free marketplace of ideas to advance his political agenda.
While the government argued that NEA projects, which are government funded, are therefore government speech, the judge found that this was instead private speech supported by government funds — which means that artists’ freedom of expression should remain unobstructed.
The Trump Administration also correctly noted that “Plaintiffs undisputedly lack any right” to receive government grants, which are competitive.
But Judge Smith found this rhetoric “unavailing.” The plaintiffs never claimed to be entitled to the grant. “Rather,” Smith writes, “they claim a right to have their applications assessed according to criteria that are not viewpoint discriminatory.”
“This decision affirms what we have always believed: the freedom to create, to express one’s truth, and to tell our stories is a right protected by the First Amendment,” said Marta V. Martínez, the executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts, in an email to Erin in the Morning. “As an organization deeply rooted in storytelling, theater, and the preservation of cultural history, we are relieved and grateful that the courts have recognized the importance of protecting artistic expression for all people, including those in LGBTQ+ communities.”
As in many authoritarian campaigns, art has been recognized as a vital form of resistance — but bad actors have sought to curtail it accordingly. During the reign of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler waged a vicious purge of German-dubbed “degenerate art,” works which were often made by, for and about Jews (among other things). Another famous example of this, closer to home, was the backlash to The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller. The play was a scathing political commentary on McCarthyism that resulted in Miller (and other “subversive” artists) being blacklisted from the industry at the government’s behest; he was even denied a passport. And as Erin in the Morning reported recently, chalk street art in Orlando honoring LGBTQ gun violence victims led to multiple arrests. We also shined a light on an Oklahoma college performance of a show dramatizing the lives of Shakespearean actors, which was cancelled by the school, which allegedly feared backlash if they let it debut. (That play, Boy My Greatness, contained themes of queerness.) And at the Smithsonian, a renowned Black artist cancelled an exhibition rather than let the Trump Administration bully her into removing a painting of a transgender woman dressed as Lady Liberty.
“Congress specifically set up the National Endowment for the Arts to insulate it from this type of political meddling in funding the arts,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island. “This ruling is a win for our plaintiffs, and for free speech.”
