Good afternoon, friends and subscribers!

This week I’ve been doing some rethinking about how Well Beings News makes money. I'm looking at reworking how the Professional membership tier works, with an eye toward bringing in more general readership rather than keeping it narrowly pitched at professional subscribers alone. I'm also going to start pitching some of my more ambitious reporting to outside outlets who pay for it, rather than keeping every big story exclusive to this newsletter.

None of this means WBN is going anywhere — I’m still just experimenting to build something that can sustain itself long-term. The weekly columns are coming back soon, and I'll have more to share on all of this as it firms up.

Before we get to the news: the Provider Needs Survey is still open, and your answers shape what comes next. If you work with trans patients in any health or wellness capacity, it takes a few minutes, and everyone who completes it gets a heavily discounted Professional membership trial: $5 for the first three months.

What that gets you: access to the research link database, downloadable resources, and priority access to new courses and other learning material with a focus on trans media literacy for health professionals.

Now, the news.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has begun dismantling LGBTQ+ veteran care, archiving resources and folding specialized coordinators into general roles. Rep. Mark Takano, the top Democrat on House Veterans Affairs, is pledging to fight the rollback and accusing the administration of deliberately undermining veterans' health care. The DOJ and Bureau of Prisons may be violating a federal court order governing trans women in custody, caught between two conflicting rulings. The administration also cut HIV prevention funding to community organizations including Equitas Health in Ohio, a move advocates warn could fuel new infections.

A federal judge rejected the administration's bid to dismiss transgender Air Force troops' retirement lawsuit. A separate judge is demanding the Pentagon explain why testosterone is promoted as a readiness benefit for some troops while the same hormone justifies removing trans ones. A leading Democratic think tank's reset on trans rights is alarming advocates, signaling new openness to sports restrictions it once opposed.

House Republicans added anti-LGBTQ riders targeting Pride flags, trans rights, and DEI programs to a funding bill. Five Democrats crossed party lines to help strip health care from trans servicemembers and their families. In Louisiana, Bossier Parish advanced a criminal bathroom ban carrying up to six months in jail. And the WTA greenlit genetic sex testing for its athletes, a policy aimed at trans women — none of whom currently compete on tour — that falls hardest on intersex cisgender women.

International

In Finland, government reports are raising concerns about neglectful mental health practices at a hospital affiliated with gender critic Riittakerttu Kaltiala, involving cisgender adolescents in her care. In the UK, QueerAF's investigation found one gender clinic's wait stretching to 224 years, revisiting the Gender Clinic Files a year on. But in the Netherlands, a landmark official review is recommending expanded trans youth care, finding wait times must shorten, detransition remains rare, and the benefits of care are substantial.

In Gabon, a harsh new bill threatens to re-criminalize LGBTQ+ people, banning same-sex relationships and LGBTQ+ advocacy and sparking alarm across the continent. In South Africa, psychologists joined a global declaration rejecting conversion practices as harmful, unethical, and unscientific.

Rio will host the 2026 International AIDS Conference, a gathering shadowed by steep US funding cuts to the global HIV fight.

Debunk the pee-drinking myth: them. explains why some cisgender women on TikTok are drinking pee to avoid hormone replacement therapy for perimenopause and menopause symptoms — a media-literacy debunk worth having on hand when patients ask about it.

Help reinstate Queensland trans healthcare: a new e-petition urges Queensland's Parliament to restore gender-affirming care access, and Queenslanders are encouraged to sign.