Considering starting every future article with "Here is the promise you and I must cling to across the thousands of words that follow." @caity.bsky.social
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
The authors of the HHS report on trans youth health care were chosen by the Manhattan Institute's Leor Sapir.
Now, a rule based on the controversial report could wipe out this care at hospitals.
Parents are begging the administration not to go through with it.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
"We have a great person here. Where's our beautiful, great swimmer, Gaines. Where's Gaines? Look at, come up here. Will you please come up here? Come up. Come up, come up. This is a great champion... Come on up here. Look at this. LOOK at this." August 2022 www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB6Z...
"This was one of the big reasons that we all won....I want to thank Riley. She really has been in the forefront.” - Trump, February 2025
"A state license used to mean something to the patients who entrust their care to licensed professionals—i.e., that the person is certified to be one who provides treatments that are consistent with the standard of care," Jackson wrote. "That stops today." www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
In her lone dissent today, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that today's decision could unleash all sorts of harmful medical care—“the Court could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers."
The science on conversion therapy is unambiguous: it’s both ineffective and dangerous. All the way back in 2009, an American Psychological Association task force issued a landmark report documenting the lack of evidence behind sexual orientation “change efforts,” as scientists refer to them. Since then, APA has only strengthened its stance against both anti-gay and anti-trans conversion efforts. In October 2015, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published a report concluding that sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts were “coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.”
To be clear, there's been a medical consensus for years that conversion therapy 1) doesn't actually work 2) is associated with serious mental health harms, including suicidality. More in this story www.motherjones.com/politics/202... and this one www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
"Conversion therapy" lacks a precise definition, but it is used colloquially to describe attempts to shift a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. ATCSI trains therapists on how to do this, and its members have filed multiple lawsuits similar to today's SCOTUS case since 2012.
Today, the group's press release says it "appreciates that the Supreme Court recognized what the ATSCI has been asserting for decades."
It's clear the group sees today's SCOTUS decision as energizing & legitimizing. In its last newsletter, Pickup wrote: "If the Supreme Court rules in favor of ending the bans on change therapies in 2026, then The Alliance will champion the opportunity to rise exponentially."
The conversion therapy interest group profiled in this story with @hencarnell.bsky.social is cheering today's SCOTUS ruling. "Clients who have been forced to believe in LGBTQ ideology have faced irreversible harm in some cases," president David Pickup says. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Yet anti-LGBTQ+ therapists now enjoy a First Amendment right that is denied to abortion providers. But as Jackson pointed out, the inconsistency runs deeper. After Chiles, parents who seek to “convert” their transgender children have a constitutional right to do so. But thanks to last year’s decision in Skrmetti, parents who seek to affirm their transgender children with medication have no such right. States can ban gender-affirming medication but evidently cannot ban anti-transgender talk therapy. And the majority does not explain why anti-LGBTQ+ speech receives heightened protections when other viewpoints do not. Surely, Jackson wrote, a state can direct doctors to discourage, and not encourage, smoking cigarettes. It can prohibit doctors “from telling an anorexic patient to eat less” while allowing them to recommend eating more. It can stop doctors from encouraging patients to end their lives. These laws, too, censor speech on the basis of the state’s preferred viewpoint—in Gorsuch’s words, they “enforce orthodoxy.” Why is it, then, that nobody seriously argues that they’d violate the First Amendment, too?
The Supreme Court's "conversion therapy" decision today is indefensible on its own terms. A ton of medical regulations restrict speech on the basis of "viewpoint." Nobody thinks they're unconstitutional. This court just subjects pro-LGBTQ protections to special hostility. slate.com/news-and-pol...
In an 8-1 decision on this year's Trans Day of Visibility, the Supreme Court ruled against a Colorado law forbidding licensed therapists from a practice known as conversion therapy that the medical profession has long since discredited and condemned.
if you want to know the history of this kind of policy, I made a podcast two years ago that explained why these tests make no sense, how they were already used and eventually abandoned by the IOC in the 80's and 90's, and the devastating impacts they have on real athletes: www.tested-podcast.com
my JV hockey coach would be shocked!!
thanks!!! Hope all is well, we should catch up!
thank you Julie!!
Hell yeah!
A graphic with the 2026 Sports Emmys logo. It's titled "Outstanding Sports Journalism." The nominees are "Aspiration" by Pablo Torre Finds Out (Meadowlark Media), "Kobe: The Making of a Legend" (CNN Originals), "Save: The Katie Meyer Story" by E60 (ESPN), and "What Is Riley Gaines Hiding?" by Pablo Torre Finds Out (Meadowlark Media). The show airs live May 26th at 7 p.m. ET at watch.theemmys.tv and The Emmys apps.
Holy cow my investigation into Riley Gaines for @pablo.show was nominated for an Emmy in Outstanding Sports Journalism!!! Cannot stop dancing around my apartment. Here's the show if you missed it! www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUl...
@byninamartin.bsky.social has written the definitive policy story on how it came to be that abortions are more accessible than ever *after* the fall of Roe v. Wade. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
"Something design people always try to say...is that every single thing that happens in the country needs a building. So every time you hear about a kid being removed from his parents, somebody had to make that choice, and somebody had to produce those plans and those blueprints.”
SCOOP: The #1 "Justice Facility" architecture firm in the country, DLR Group, has committed not work on ICE detention or deportation facilities, after workers raised ethical objections to a deal to turn an an old private prison in Oklahoma into a new ICE jail. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Billie Jean!! Thank you.
Gwen, this is lovely.
Kris Kobach started trying mess with trans people’s drivers licenses as soon as Kansas legislators approved the so-called “Women’s Bill of Rights,” imposing a legal definition of sex, in 2023 but courts held him back. Until the legislature decided to escalate.
Revoking licenses with 3 days notice.
"You’re always misusing the photograph." I miss this class. Thanks for the reminder.
thanks for sharing your research, Liz!!
aw. Henry!!
I wanted to know the backstory of the executive order that defined "man" and "woman"—the foundation for the Trump admin's targeting of trans people.
So I took a deep dive into the conservative strategy & distorted feminism behind it. And I talked to the author.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
