'Maine residents rally to keep LGBTQ book in local libraries' & other Wed/Thur news briefs

Resident in the city of Gardiner, ME rallied to keep the LGBTQ book 'Prince and Knight' on the library shelves after some people called it 'propaganda' created to 'indoctrinate' children.

Residents rally to keep LGBTQ book in Gardiner-area school libraries - Good news coming from Maine to start it all off on a positive note. 

Engineer sues LA County for right to work from home when Pride flag is displayed​ - It's ridiculous, but the Supreme Court has everyone playing the "it's my religious liberty" card so he could win. It's becoming annoying how almost every time we are mentioned in the public square, someone pulls the "religious liberty" card to render us invisible or create some sort of psychological roadblock which they would never do in other situations.

San José State University Sues Trump Admin Over Anti-Trans Threats—Refusing to Capitulate - Good for them!

Cisgender kids in Texas can’t get care due to anti-trans laws - Transphobes like to smear puberty blockers when they are prescribed to trans teens. They don't say a word when they are prescribed to other kids for different conditions. 

There Is No Evidence For Banning Trans Women From Sports - SCOTUS is not going to rule in our favor on this subject because it's all about fears and irrational suspicions. Still, this information is needed.

He helped ban conversion therapy. Now the Supreme Court could undo it all. - Now we could win this SCOTUS case. But then again, it could be the "it's my religious freedom" card played again.

This conservative is losing his mind over Biden’s “gay maps,” but the joke’s on him - The joke's on him? He is a joke.

LGBTQ studies are necessary in K-12 education - Amen! We need to have this conversation. and NOW.

Moms risk arrest to protect gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth

From Orion Rummler of The 19th by way of The Advocate comes a simple fact that the parents of trans kids are determined to keep their children healthy and safe. 

Even if they have to be arrested for it:

(Larissa) Godfrey-Smith was one of over 50 people who joined a protest last month against the Trump administration’s plans to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. They blocked the entrance to the Health and Human Services Department headquarters to demand that the government stop blocking medical care for transgender kids. Godfrey-Smith was among the 25 protesters arrested.

 Parents and grandparents of trans youth, plus their therapists and medical providers, are fed up after years of health care bans and hostile rhetoric. Those feelings are driving them to do things they’ve never done before — like plan to get arrested at a protest.

 . . . As a licensed professional counselor who specializes in LGBTQ+ mental health, Godfrey-Smith, who uses she and they pronouns, works with trans kids and their families as they navigate the complexities of gender changing over time. They answer nervous parents’ questions. They talk about concerns regarding medical transition. They also work with trans adults who are well into their 30s and 40s and figuring it all out for the first time. 

 The Trump administration is not helping those patients, she said; bans and rhetoric are just making everything worse. Families are confused about what they can access and what to believe. Financial costs to find knowledgeable providers are rising. And parents are scared about the world their trans children are growing up in. 

“I’m so angry and so frustrated. I’m just so exhausted at the misinformation,” they said. As a mental health provider, they know that families feel abandoned. She wants those families to see people standing up for them. 

 

Read the entire article here. 

'Trump causes MAGA meltdown with post accidentally supporting 'child transgender surgery'' & other Thur/Fri news briefs

Trump's original Truth Social post which causes a conservative meltdown

Trump Deletes Post Backing Child Transgender Surgery With ‘Approval of the Parents’ Following Backlash From Conservatives​ - Gender-affirming healthcare for trans kids generally doesn't involve surgery and I'm sure this was an error in syntax on Trump's part. STILL, it was hilarious to watch conservatives flip out over it. 

Joe Rogan calls trans people “f**king perverts” & blames them for school shootings - Joe Rogan's personal animus against the trans community is probably one of the things which fueled transphobic backlashes. 

13 HIV/AIDS activists arrested on Capitol Hill - Good for them! 

West Virginia Senate passes ‘anti-LGBTQ’ bills on Crossover Day - Bizarre bills. I guess they were meant to be anti-LGBTQ

'Trump admin hangs banner of anti-LGBTQ influencer Charlie Kirk outside Ed. Dept' & other Tue/Wed news briefs

Charlie Kirk

Trump admin hangs banner of anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Charlie Kirk outside Ed. Dept. ​- The Trump Administration is joining conservatives in an attempt to cram a false image of Charlie Kirk down the throats of Americans. And it's not working. Kirk was a racist and a demagogue. He lowered the tone of political discourse in this country, and it probably led to his assassination. He is not nor will he ever be a great American figure.

NY attorney general's office orders NYU Langone to resume services for trans kids - The Trump Administration bullied this hospital, NYU Lagone, into discontinuing services for trans youth such as puberty blockers and hormones. But the NY attorney general's office stepped in and pointed out how these same services are still offered to other youth, which makes not offering the same services to trans youth an act of discrimination. 

Supreme Court deals blow to trans student privacy protections - In case you haven't heard, SCOTUS did us dirty again. They have a genuine hostility for us.

Scouting America clarifies that their deal with Pete Hegseth doesn’t ban trans kids - Speaking of hostility, Trump's Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been trying to bully the Scouts with regards to "DEI" and trans kids. He may not have been as successful as he thought.

Donald Trump's SOTU, Sage Blair, and 'sex transitioning operations for minors'

Hoping to draw attention away from his disastrous poll numbers and piss poor performance as president, Donald Trump used a small portion of his recent State of the Union address to again attack the trans community. 

But was there a change in plans in terms of how he did it?

According to an early tweet from Reagan Reese, a reporter from the far-right publication The Daily Caller:

SCOOP: President Trump's guests for his State of the Union address will include Sage Blair, a young woman who was separated from her parents at age 14 after school officials attempted to secretly transition her to a male, @DailyCaller has learned.

Blair, who is now reunited with…

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) February 24, 2026

 However, there was a major problem with that claim. 

Sage Blair's case had nothing to do with "sex transitioning surgeries for minors."

Sage Blair's story: school secretly affirmed male identity (name/pronouns/boys' bathroom) at 14, hid bullying/assaults from guardians. She ran away, was trafficked 9 days, then separated further by court over non-affirmation. No surgeries/hormones ever mentioned in any reports or…

— Grok (@grok) February 25, 2026

Several people quickly pointed this mistake out on Twitter. 

Later, when Trump mentioned Sage Blair in his State of the Union address, he claimed that her school secretly socially transitioned Blair and he was wanting - according to LGBTQNation - "a nationwide ban on schools acknowledging and supporting trans and gender diverse students’ social transitions without notifying their parents."

 But even so, the story of Sage Blair is a bit more complicated than Trump led on.

According to one LGBTQNation article:

Blair is a Virginia high school teen who began socially transitioning at age 14 by using male pronouns and facilities at their school (allegedly without their mother’s knowledge). Blair’s mother sued the school district, alleging that the mental distress caused by the school’s policies and subsequently bullying from other students compelled her child to run away from home and fall victim to child sex traffickers. Virginia Republicans have since championed “Sage’s Law,” a bill that would require schools to forcibly out trans kids to their potentially unaccepting parents. 

Another LGBTQNation article went into more extensive detail:

As Law Commentary notes, Blair’s lawsuit rests on her claim that ACHS officials had a duty to inform her of Sage’s social transition and that if they had, the traumatic events that followed would not have happened. But as Assigned Media’s Evan Urquhart notes, it’s impossible to know if that would have been the case. Urquhart goes on to note that trans teens who are not accepted by their parents are particularly vulnerable to online predators, and cites a 2013 study indicating that trans young people experience better mental health outcomes when they are accepted and affirmed by their parents. 

 As the New York Times reports, last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a lower court’s dismissal of Blair’s claim that ACHS officials violated her right to direct the child’s upbringing. A separate claim that the school violated Title IX by acting with “deliberate indifference” to the threats Sage experienced from classmates is currently moving through the courts, according to the Times.

So perhaps initial reports from the Daily Caller that Trump would use the Sage Blair case as a reason to call for a ban against "sex transition operations for minors" an honest mistake. Or maybe something else. With this administration, who can tell which is truth and which is speculation?

But the dishonesty and scapegoating are always clear.

'She ain't real, y'all!' - Nicki Minaji's MAGA social media busted for being propped up by bots and fake accounts

Nicki Minaj

The idea that Nicki Minaj became a follower of Donald Trump based on the strength of his personality is bull. We all know this. She wants something and is willing to sell out Black Americans for it, as this explosive expose in Politico proves:

Nicki Minaj spent the past year transforming herself from a polarizing rap superstar into a high-profile conservative provocateur, lobbing viral attacks at Democratic leaders, boosting MAGA talking points and earning public praise from President Donald Trump and his allies.  On social media, Minaj’s pugnacious persona and sharp-edged posts — including repeated broadsides against California Gov. Gavin Newsom — have made her a darling of the Trump administration and the conservative movement, drawing millions of views and steady amplification from far-right influencers. 

But quietly, humming in the background of her varied social media blitzes, a sophisticated army of bots was unconditionally praising and amplifying Minaj’s content, according to a new report shared exclusively with POLITICO. 

 The report, compiled by the disinformation detection company Cyabra, identifies a coordinated network of bots — more than 18,000 of them — that drove algorithms to spread Minaj’s posts on X.

 . . . The report found inauthentic accounts repeatedly amplified Minaj’s posts with praise that used “highly similar language,” particularly in response to posts where authentic accounts were criticizing Minaj. “Supportive comments generated by fake profiles were predominantly brief, repetitive, and low in semantic complexity, consisting largely of praising keywords and positive hashtags rather than original or substantive engagement,” the report found.

 Other inauthentic activity surrounding Minaj included “longer, more detailed comments designed to appear organic.” “Nicki you are brave for living your truth, people might not always agree with what’s being played out, but as an artist and watching your growth as a person is inspiring,” read one comment from a purported Minaj fan, @LAX76283656, that was deemed fake by Cyabra. “This pattern suggests a deliberate attempt to integrate into genuine conversations, increasing the credibility and visibility of the amplified content,” the report read. 

 . . . Bot networks have become a familiar feature of modern politics since revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, when coordinated inauthentic accounts were used to inflame divisions and manipulate online discourse. 

Such campaigns are now routinely detected around wars, elections and geopolitical flashpoints — but far less often around celebrities or the music industry. That backdrop helps explain why Cyabra’s findings seem so peculiar. Rather than a short-lived spike tied to a single event or appearance, the company found sustained and coordinated amplification of Minaj’s posts across a range of political and cultural topics over time.

You can read the full article here

'Tenn bill attempts to undermine gay marriage by allowing individuals, private groups to refuse to recognize it' & other Thur/Fri news briefs

Bill to let private groups refuse to recognize same sex marriage passes Tennessee House - These continuous attempts to undermine same-sex marriage are going nowhere in a landscape where it is now normal for gay to marry. No matter how supporters of these attempts try to weaponize them as "religious liberty," they still come across as mean-spirited: 

 Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, told News 2 that while the bill likely won’t change things for large, private entities, including national bank branches or big healthcare systems, it would likely hurt those in rural areas where those organizations are smaller and often locally-owned. 

“Imagine if the Treasury Secretary were driving through the state of Tennessee and had an accident in a small, rural county, and someone refused to recognize his husband as his husband, and they had to make medical decisions or wanted to visit in the healthcare facility,” Sanders said. “That’s the kind of impact that this bill could have on anybody in a dire circumstance.” 

Trump falsely links trans people to terrorism. Now, a target is on their back. - This is not good, y'all. Folks need to know this but I didn't make this the leading story because I don't want to help cause a panic. 

4th Circuit rules against discharged service members with HIV - Awful ruling. 

Lansing school officials react after DOJ launches investigation into LGBTQ policies - Ridiculous overreach which is a reminder that the Trump Administration is targeting all of us. BUT they will not defeat us.