Leading Off: Protests and Court Challenges Swell, as Gender Care Is Affirmed
Will Trump obey the courts? Cass is getting lonelier by the moment. And the Germans warn about travel to the U.S. The leading story lines as the week begins.
by Assigned Media
In Leading Off we highlight a few trans news stories to watch as each week begins.
Thousands of transgender people, relatives and allies rallied across the country this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to institutionalize bigotry and drive trans people out of public life.
“We see attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, especially against trans women and girls, who deserve to live with dignity and with safety,” Emily Dievendorf, Michigan’s first openly nonbinary legislator, told a crowd in Lansing, the state capital, at one of several protests held nationwide, from Missouri to California to Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile in Albany, protesters focused specifically on a call for justice in the brutal murder of Sam Nordquist, a trans man, in upstate New York. Advocates have called Nordquist’s killing “a dark reminder of the risks marginalized people face in America,” according to NBC News, which published a nuanced and detailed account of the case. Seven people have been charged.
In the Courts: The Trump administration, in defiance of several court rulings, has begun transferring trans women held in U.S. prisons to men’s facilities, the Guardian reported Saturday. Whitney, a trans woman who was transferred to a men’s prison, told the Guardian that she was a “pawn in other people’s political games.”
Just a day earlier, Trump’s anti-trans prison directives faced a new legal challenge in federal court, The Hill reported. Three trans inmates filed a class action lawsuit late Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contesting his directives to end gender-affirming care for inmates.
Information v Disinformation: New gender-care guidelines for German, Swiss and Austrian young people “directly recommend puberty blockers and individualized, prioritized care,” Erin Reed reported on Sunday. In issuing its guidelines, the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany also sharply criticized the findings of last year’s Cass Review in the United Kingdom, citing shortcomings in its methodology, expertise and transparency.
Much of the U.K. news media, as well as some American outlets including The New York Times and WBUR, heaped mounds of positive, uncritical coverage on the Cass review last year, but the report has increasingly been shown to be a politicized outlier. Another review in France late last year also endorsed gender-affirming care for young people as safe and beneficial.
On the Road: The administration’s anti-trans directives on IDs and passports are sowing fear and confusion, USA Today reported. "Receiving a passport that misgenders me is not just a clerical error; it's a profound denial of my identity and my existence,” said Ashton Orr, who told USA Today he had been interrogated and forced to out himself in an airport encounter.
The bigoted policies are having international repercussions. Germany has issued a warning that trans and non-binary people will face difficulties entering the United States, The Advocate reported
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