Features

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GOP Airs False Anti-Trans Ad About Sherrod Brown

Cleveland’s ABC affiliate reports: In an attack ad against U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, a woman accuses the Democrat of pushing transgender surgeries on minors “like her.” As it turns out, she isn’t from Ohio and didn’t have surgery until she was an adult. The Senate Leadership Fund has created multiple ads about former Sen. Sherrod Brown. In them, the political action committee accuses him of “forcing childhood sex change surgery.” Two of their most recent ads feature a woman and social media influencer Soren Aldaco. “Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids like me,” Aldaco says. […]

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In Democratic-led Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh hospital caves to Trump. Trans kids lose care for a decade

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Pennsylvania trans rights activists protested the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s agreement to stop providing gender-affirming medical care to patients under 19 for the next decade. About 20 people protested outside UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lawrenceville on Sunday, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The protest came after UPMC agreed to pay the federal government $950,000 to resolve an investigation into alleged billing practices related to gender-affirming care for minors. The settlement also includes protections for patients’ private medical information. UPMC denied any wrongdoing. Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five […]

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TikTok Settles Alabama’s Child Harm Suit For $100M

Reuters reports: Alabama said on Friday it had reached a settlement with TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, that requires the social media platform to impose new usage limits and enhanced age-verification measures for users in the state, resolving claims that the platform endangered children and misled consumers about its safety. The agreement, which came days before a scheduled trial, calls for TikTok to implement changes for teenagers in Alabama including a two-hour daily time limit, pauses after 15 minutes of use and stricter age checks. TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million under the settlement, but the state’s […]

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Meta had to be shamed into restoring queer club pages on Facebook and Instagram

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A months-long struggle by queer nightclubs across Los Angeles — as well as one historic venue in San Francisco — to regain access to Meta’s social media platforms is finally over, according to the Los Angeles Times. But critical questions remain unanswered.  Like, why did the powers that control pages on Facebook and Instagram take down the pages of Club Cobra, Club Chico, Catch One, Club Tempo, The Stud and that of an L.A. promoter of a transgender-focused club night in the first place? Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox […]

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Two more hospitals strike DOJ deals to end gender-affirming care for minors

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Major hospital systems in New York and Pennsylvania have struck deals with the Justice Department that carry steep financial penalties and keep gender-affirming services closed to minors. NYU Langone Health will pay the department $8.5 million, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will pay $950,000, the department announced Friday. The deals come after providers in New York, Texas, Ohio and Connecticutadopted similar agreements. Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. President Donald Trump has moved to ban gender-affirming care for minors since his second term began. Last December, the Trump administration threatened […]

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Christian nationalist law firm threatens to sue school over trans teacher

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A right-wing law firm has threatened to sue North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System unless it lets parents opt their children out of a class taught by a transgender teacher. The Thomas More Society set out its demands in a letter dated 15 September, giving the district 15 days to comply before it files suit. The demands include restrictions around pronouns, LGBTQ+ discussions, and access to facilities, including urging the district to agree not to discipline students for using incorrect pronouns for the teacher. The group also wants assurances that “no employee can retaliate” against a student who opts out of […]

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For Lesbian Victims of Domestic Violence, Competent Care Is Scarce

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Claire, a 25-year-old Los Angeles resident, distinctly remembers the night she and her ex-girlfriend broke up. “She was strangling me in a CVS parking lot,” Claire recalls, adding how she was gasping for air as bystanders looked on. “I made eye contact with one man who just kept walking, and we were right behind a car that was trying to reverse out of a parking spot. No one got out of the car. They didn’t honk; they didn’t do anything.” Claire, who asked to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns regarding her ex, says she managed to fight her […]

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For LGBTQ+ youth, vaping is becoming a dangerous coping mechanism

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It’s long been known that the bullying LGBTQ+ people face in their youth can have lifelong health ramifications, but a new study is finding this type of social rejection may have a particularly impactful effect on vaping rates. Previous research has shown that LGBTQ+ people tend to vape at disproportionately high rates compared to their straight and cisgender peers, with 22% of gay men and lesbians and 18% of bisexuals vaping, compared to 15% of straight people. But according to a new study published in the journal of Prevention Science, LGBTQ+ youth may exhibit high rates of e-cigarette and vape usage because of […]

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BOYCOTT: Elon Musk is pushing millions into dishonest, anti-trans midterm ads

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America PAC, the super PAC backed by Elon Musk, is set to spend over $100 million in an effort to help Republicans win in the midterms. So far, that spending budget seems to be going almost exclusively towards anti-trans ads that push scaremongering lies about trans people, misinformation about Democratic candidates, and are (in some cases) likely AI-generated. “Elon Musk is scapegoating LGBTQ+ Americans to distract voters from the cuts he made and the chaos he has caused,” Ramiro Sarmiento, the National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Trans people aren’t the reason cancer research has […]

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The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters in the 2026 General Election

Transgender people face unique obstacles to obtaining identity documents (ID) that match their gender identity. Identity documents that do not match a person’s gender, such as a person’s name or gender marker, create obstacles to participating in many facets of public life, including voting. Such obstacles may affect voting in the 36 states with voter ID laws, especially the 33 that conduct their elections primarily in person. In these states, voters encounter additional verification requirements at the polls, in addition to federal standards for voter registration and eligibility determination. The strictest of these voter ID laws require voters to present […]

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