Welcome to this week’s news roundup. I know that a lot is going on in the world right now, and it’s hard to focus on just one thing, but I’m glad you’re here to keep up on the queer trans health news that most impacts you and your LGBTQ+ clients and communities.

My apologies for sending this out a day late. Our electricity (and thus our WiFi) and our local cell network were down for most of the day yesterday, making work impossible. Instead, I spent some time in a highly unusual (for me) quiet, reading our next book for Buy the Book? and hoping the power eventually came back on. (It did.)

In truth, it took me hours to calm down, to turn off my phone, to stop wanting to reach for the remote, and just sit with words on a page. Some days, I really dislike the person that social media has made me. So I love coming back to this work every week, planning my next article or column, thinking about developing courses and recording videos for social media, even when it’s about heavy stuff like the Supreme Court deciding that conversion therapy is a “free speech” right.

So thank you for being on the other end of all that work, for reading and supporting. In the next month or so, I will be launching another paid subscriber drive to raise funds to attend the Mexico City WPATH conference in November — tickets went on sale a week ago, and both hotel rooms and AirBnBs are filling up fast.

If you want to get a head start in supporting me in that, feel free to upgrade today, or contribute a one-time donation to the travel fund! Now, on to the news…

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that state bans on conversion therapy likely violate the First Amendment, holding that talk-based professional conduct is protected speech — a decision that could invalidate protections in more than 23 states. Justice Jackson warned in her lone dissent that the ruling could make speech-based medical treatments broadly unregulatable.

A new Kaltiala study claims gender-affirming care worsens youth mental health. Still, Erin Reed's fact-check identifies fatal methodological flaws, including massive surveillance bias from a system that counts mandatory quarterly psychiatric check-ins as evidence of decline. I covered how this disinformation pipeline works in last week's Rx Resist — this study is already following the same trajectory.

Children's Minnesota has resumed all Gender Health services after a federal court ruling vacated the Trump administration's care restrictions. Vanderbilt's decision to cease gender-affirming surgeries for adults has left zero surgical options in Tennessee, forcing patients to travel to Atlanta or Chicago. A federal judge in Maryland refused to lift the nationwide injunction blocking the administration from conditioning federal funding on whether providers offer gender-affirming care to minors.

Idaho is requiring teachers, therapists, and counselors to report any suspected gender non-conformity in children to parents within 72 hours, with no safety exception and penalties up to $100,000.

In the UK, the NHS published its new service specification for children and young people's gender services: no gender-affirming medical treatment for under-18s, safeguarding interventions if families seek care elsewhere, and training run by the Cass Review network.

And a transgender woman's allegations of mistreatment at a Free State hospital in South Africa underscore systemic barriers to gender-affirming care in the public health system. Senegal's president signed a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ law doubling prison sentences for same-sex relations to ten years and criminalizing the "promotion" of homosexuality, bisexuality, and trans identities. India's president signed amendments to the country's transgender rights law that strip self-identification, narrow the legal definition of trans to specific socio-cultural groups, and mandate that hospitals report gender-affirming surgeries to authorities.

Support trans healthcare funds as institutional options continue to disappear — direct mutual aid is keeping people in care right now.

Read the first Rx Resist column on the anti-trans disinformation pipeline and upgrade to paid to improve your media literacy alongside us.

Transitics' Comprehensive Anti-Trans Policy and Litigation Map 2.0 — The updated state-by-state tracker now includes policy ratings, risk projections for bathroom bans and identity documents, and a new color-coded scoring system from "Most Progressive" to "Most Restrictive."
Every Trans Suicide Is a Murder — Alejandra Caraballo applies Friedrich Engels' framework of social murder to the current legislative landscape, arguing that the sustained campaign to strip trans people of healthcare, legal recognition, and public existence meets every element of the definition.
She Spoke with Eight Trans Women in Prison — Uncloseted Media's Hope Pisoni investigated how the Bureau of Prisons is still denying trans women gender-affirming care despite a court injunction blocking Trump's executive order, and found retaliation against those who pushed back.
The Trans Panic Clickbait Economy — Cool Zone Media’s It Could Happen Here investigates a series of frightening claims: that ICE can detain people for ‘looking trans,’ the creation of a transgender public registry, and that an adult gender-affirming healthcare ban is imminent.
Reconstruction and the Criminalization of Transition in the 1870s — Jules Gill-Peterson traces the roots of anti-crossdressing laws to Reconstruction-era policing and Jim Crow, revealing a 150-year lineage of anti-trans criminalization that puts today's legislative attacks in sharp historical context. (Part IV in a series)
The Idaho Legislature Isn't Governing. It's Hunting Transgender People — An Advocate opinion piece on Idaho's proposed felony bathroom bill, which would carry jail time for each offense and effectively banish trans people from public restrooms.