Ten years after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub, survivors, family and friends of the 49 victims are gathering in Orlando to honor the dead.

Several events around the city will pay tribute to those lost in what was then the largest mass shooting in American history. 58 clubgoers at the Latin-themed night during Pride Month were injured in the massacre, many of them severely. Others still suffer the emotional fallout.

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“I’ve been crying all day,” out Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan told the Orlando Herald-Tribune. Sheehan was on-site at Pulse as the tragedy unfolded and helped lead the city’s response in the aftermath.

Brandon Wolf, a survivor and advocate following the tragedy, lamented “ten years of missing faces at birthday parties, empty seats at dinner tables, and voicemails never returned.”

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Now senior communications director at Equality Florida, Wolf said missteps honoring the victims and the current hateful political climate have only added to the tragedy.

“But one thing has not changed: the strength of our community to, in the face of hate, shine brighter and bolder than before,” he said.

Orlandoans will come together to remember at several memorials today and through June.

First United Methodist Church will commemorate the victims at the 2026 Pulse Remembrance Ceremony, featuring the Orlando Gay Chorus and more musical performances by local artists, a presentation by Orlando Poet Laureate Camara Gaither, and a candlelight ceremony and reading of the 49 names. 

City Hall Plaza in Orlando will host a prayer ribbon memorial exhibition through June 14. Ten years ago, Jay Critchley and a group of fellow Provincetown artists sent colorful ribbons inscribed with each victim’s name to Orlando. 49 black ribbons honor the dead on the tenth anniversary of the shooting.

An exhibition at the Terrace Gallery in Orlando features 49 portraits honoring those who died at Pulse. For Created in Community: Portraits of Pulse, artist Jeff Sonksen provided a kind of paint-by-numbers start for each picture, which family and friends completed.  

Orlando City Commissioner Sheehan was instrumental in organizing an on-site blood donation drive as the Pulse nightclub shooting unfolded. That life-saving effort is honored and repeated at the Day of Remembrance Blood Drive at City Hall on Friday. Donors can reserve a spot with the local blood donation organization, OneBlood.

The future Pulse Memorial site will be lit in rainbow colors overnight through June 15.  

On Saturday, the Human Rights Campaign and Equality Florida will lead a panel discussion called 10 Years Since Pulse: Honor Them With Action Memorial Panel, featuring Equality Florida’s Wolf and out Florida state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D). The panel looks back, and forward, to talk about ways to honor the victims with action. The event is at 10 a.m. June 13 at a private location. Register at mobilize.us.

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Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg slammed Donald Trump for saying that he loves inflation.

“We have a president and a White House that clearly don’t care,” Buttigieg said in a video posted to social media.

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Buttigieg was referring to comments Trump made on Wednesday in the Oval Office when he was asked about the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Consumer Price Index (CPI), which showed an annualized rate for May of 4.2%, higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target and higher than it has been in three years.

“No, I love it, the numbers are great,” Trump told a reporter who asked him about rising inflation. “You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”

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Democrats have attacked Trump for those comments, saying that they show that he likely doesn’t care about the cost of living for people who are not himself. Hillary Clinton compared Trump to Marie Antoinette.

Buttigeig pointed out that the U.S. wholesale inflation rate is even worse at an annualized rate of 6.5% for May, up from 4.3% in March and the highest it has been since 2022.

Trump, Buttigieg said, is “focused on things like building a new ballroom and shielding the president’s family from ever having their taxes audited” instead of lowering the cost of living, even though it was the number one promise that got him into office.”

Buttigieg said that the current increase is a result of Trump’s war on Iran.

He then said that this shows how important it is for people to vote in the midterm elections later this year and get involved in the election.

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A state judge in Maine agreed on Thursday that “Protect Girls’ Sports,” an anti-transgender activist group, tried to get a referendum on sports participation on the ballot this fall but failed to collect enough valid signatures.

Earlier this year, Protect Girls’ Sports, a campaign that was bankrolled by out-of-state billionaire Richard Uihlein, submitted 79,692 signatures — well over the 67,682 required to qualify — to get a measure on the ballot this fall that would ban trans kids from participating in school sports.

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But Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) ruled in May that, because 12,542 of those signatures were possibly fraudulent, Protect Girls’ Sports did not succeed in obtaining enough signatures.

Now, Superior Court Justice Deborah Cashman has affirmed Bellows’ decision and rejected the anti-trans campaign’s appeals. Cashman’s 13-page decision focuses on the technical claims and even notes that there was “substantially more evidence of circulator wrongdoing than what the Secretary ultimately chose to rely on upon making her Revised Determination.”

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Bellows threw out some of the signatures because the collectors didn’t witness the signing (as required by state law). Others were invalidated because the signatures did not match the voters’ signatures on voter registries, because the signatories signed more than once, because the signers weren’t registered voters, or because the signatures were forgeries. Collectors were paid $3 to $4 per signature.

“The rules are in place to make sure that when a question goes on the ballot, that voters can trust that it qualified fair and square,” David Farmer of the Campaign for Free and Fair Schools told Maine Public Radio. “And in this case, it did not. They took some shortcuts and got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.”

Protect Girls’ Sports said in a statement that they would continue to appeal the decision.

“The committee remains confident in the challenges it raised to the Secretary’s decision and will seek review by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court,” the statement said.

The ballot measure would’ve defined a student’s sex as “a biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person’s original birth certificate,” effectively ending any legal recognition of trans students, not just in the cases of restrooms and sports.

The measure also would’ve carved trans students out of legal protections enshrined in the Maine Human Rights Act (a statewide anti-discrimination law), and would’ve allowed cisgender students to sue any school that allowed trans students to use sex-segregated school spaces alongside them.

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During a press event at the Oval Office on Thursday, Donald Trump claimed that there are six states that are taking people’s children and forcing them to transition, leaving people wondering if Trump was lying or if he had lost his mind, since this is not happening anywhere.

“No men in women’s sports,” he said in the middle of his long, rambling response to a question about the SAVE America Act, which would restrict voter access. “We are talking about saving America. No men in women’s sports. Another one, very popular. I think it is 99-to-1… They say it is 80/20, I think it is 99-to-1.”

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“And we have no mutilization of your children for transgender purposes. You see, transgender mutilization of your children? Does that sound good with you?” he asked someone standing behind him, who said, “Not at all.”

“Where your child leaves your house, and they take your child from you, in some cases… Think of it, in six states, they take the child and do what they want to do. What they do is, is- I don’t even want to talk about it! No transgender mutilization of your children.”

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Another reporter then asked a question about U.S. intelligence staffing.

In the replies, people questioned Trump’s mental health, while others thought that he was lucid but just lying about the states stealing children to forcibly transition them. People also called him out for not knowing the word “mutilation.”

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Bud Light has gone from sponsoring Pride events in major U.S. cities to sponsoring the Trump administration’s UFC cage match on the White House lawn.

Three years after a one-off Instagram video partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked a MAGA boycott, the brand’s logo will appear alongside those of Dodge Ram, Morgan & Morgan, Corona Extra, and Polymarket in the massive temporary arena constructed on the White House’s South Lawn, where the UFC Freedom 250 event will take place on June 14, the Associated Press reports.

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The sponsorship appears to be Bud Light’s latest effort to win back anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives after the 2023 boycott, which cost its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, around $1.4 billion in North American revenue and knocked the brand out of its long-held position as the best-selling beer in America, according to CBS.

In the immediate aftermath of the Mulvaney controversy, CEO Brendan Whitworth released a statement essentially apologizing for the partnership, saying that Anheuser-Busch “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.” And in 2024, the company’s European branch CEO, Jason Warner, claimed that the brand would “stay in our lane“ and avoid controversial issues.

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But it appears that “controversial issues” may have been code for LGBTQ+ sponsorships. Last year, Anheuser-Busch ended its partnerships with several major U.S. cities’ Pride events, including San Francisco Pride and Pride St. Louis.

In 2024, Bud Light partnered with comedian Shane Gillis, who lost a job at Saturday Night Live over his use of racial and anti-gay slurs.

In April, the brand announced a new partnership with UFC, sponsoring the mixed martial arts promotion company’s “Bud Light UFC Summer Series.” Notably, UFC CEO Dana White is a Trump ally, and the president has closely aligned his personal brand with the UFC. The president reportedly bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in UFC’s parent company, TKO Holding Group, in May, according to the New York Times.

Marketed as part of the administration’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday, the June 14 UFC Freedom 250 event has drawn criticism for coinciding with the president’s 80th birthday rather than the July 4 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One Washington lobbyist told NBC News this week that sponsorships for the event are seen as a way to curry favor with the president. Paramount+, whose parent company, Paramount Skydance, is seeking FTC approval for its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, will stream the event live. And The Independent notes that the Trump family is also directly profiting from UFC Freedom 250 memorabilia.

A lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Public Integrity Project seeks to block the event, describing it as “a corrupt scheme to hand the White House South Lawn and Lincoln Memorial to a private, for-profit sports promoter in violation of federal law.”

“This is a profoundly corrupt scheme to enrich the President and his friends,” Public Integrity Project founder Brendan Ballou said in a June 6 statement. “If this fight is allowed to proceed, it will be only the beginning, and our national monuments will become little more than branding opportunities for the rich and well-connected.”

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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) signed a proclamation on June 3 designating this month as “Marriage and Family Month.” His proclamation makes his state just the latest among several red states that have recently tried to give Pride Month a conservative and anti-LGBTQ+ rebranding.

“The nuclear family, consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children, is God’s design for the family structure and has been the foundation of every society since the creation of the world,” Pillen’s proclamation reads.

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The proclamation’s signing ceremony was attended by Nate Grasz, executive director of the anti-LGBTQ+ Nebraska Family Alliance (NFA). Grasz praised the proclamation, stating, “At a time when other states and cultural trends are celebrating ‘Pride,’ this proclamation sends a powerful message that marriage still matters because mothers and fathers matter and children deserve both whenever possible,” Grasz said. “Nebraska isn’t following the culture—we’re leading with truth. 

In his statement praising the proclamation, Grasz also mentioned Them Before Us, a campaign to end marriage equality in the U.S. supported by a coalition of 47 anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.

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No fewer than five red states have designated Pride Month as some sort of “family” month: Alabama has called June “Strong Families Month,” Florida called it “Faith and Family Month,” and Indiana and Tennessee have called it “Nuclear Family Month.” All the proclamations use anti-LGBTQ+ dog whistles, saying that the best families are those with a mother and a father raising their own “biological” children.

Sam Petto, communications director for the ACLU of Nebraska, said in a statement, “The governor has been very clear that he’s got one particular view on what an acceptable family is. And families with two moms and two dads don’t fit that picture. I’d say none of this comes as a surprise to queer Nebraskans and their loved ones.”

“The partners who were involved with it are very purposefully pitting it against Pride,” he said. “It certainly invites skepticism – any claim that it’s not an intentional slight or that the timing isn’t purposeful.”

“Queer and trans Nebraskans live in every corner of the state. All kinds of families should be accepted, recognized, and celebrated,” he added. “There’s no good reason to draw a line between some and others, as the governor did with his proclamation.”

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It’s finally that time of year, when we celebrate “Straight Pride!” And frankly, it’s about time. For centuries, heterosexual people have been oppressed, marginalized, and forced to live in the shadows of a ruthlessly queer-dominated world. It’s time we address this glaring inequality and finally celebrate the joy, the triumph, and the beautifully beige aesthetic of being straight.

First, let’s brush up on our straight history. Even before the 1960s, heterosexual people were routinely targeted, harassed, and arrested just for holding hands in public.

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Hold on, my editor is whispering in my ear. Correction: That was actually homosexual people. My mistake! But I’m sure if we dig deep enough into the archives, we’ll find a time when straight people were persecuted for their orientation. No? Nothing in the database? Huh.

Well, no matter! Straight people should still be able to celebrate the brave act of being exactly what society expects them to be. What’s not to celebrate? Imagine the sheer courage it takes to embrace an attraction to the opposite sex without a single fear of societal retaliation. It’s not like heterosexuality has been the default setting since, well, the dawn of human civilization. They deserve a parade! Sure, heterosexuals make up the vast majority of the population, but this is the modern era – everyone gets a participation trophy.

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The big straight coming out

I’ll never forget the day my sister finally came out to our parents. Lord, what an emotional roller coaster. She had confided in me weeks prior, trembling as she asked if Mom and Dad would still love her. I kept reassuring her: “It’s going to be okay. They’re progressive. They’ll accept you.”

When the moment arrived, she sat on the couch, clutching a shredded tissue in her shaking hands, took a deep breath, and confessed that she was… straight. Mom immediately burst into tears. Dad gasped. But they both jumped up to embrace her, whispering, “No matter what the outside world thinks, you are our baby, and you are perfectly, statistically normal.” I was beaming with pride.

The fight for representation

It’s just exhausting seeing how lopsided our culture is in favor of the LGBTQ+ community. Those poor, sweet straights are practically invisible. You never see them in movies, and they are certainly never depicted as representing the “normal” way of living. When was the last time you saw a jewelry commercial featuring a man and a woman? Or a sitcom centered around a husband and wife? Almost never!

It’s completely unfair that straight people don’t have a designated month to look at a billboard and think, “Wow, it’s okay to be me.”

Consider the global crisis: Right now, there are nearly 70 countries where being heterosexual is literally illegal, and in several, it carries the death penalty!

Editor’s Note: Apologies again, I read the chart upside down. It is actually illegal to be homosexual in those countries. In fact, heterosexuality is legally protected and culturally enforced in 100% of the world.

But still! That doesn’t mean straight people feel like they have the entire weight of global law, religion, and history reinforcing their lifestyle. Right?

The legislative onslaught

Let’s talk about the political climate. As we speak, there are over 500 anti-heterosexual bills moving through the U.S. legislature. Over 500! These hetero-haters are doing everything in their power to deny basic rights, ban straight couples from adopting, dictate which bathrooms they can use, and ensure that bakers don’t have to bake them a frickin’ wedding cake. They’ve even passed “Don’t Say Straight” bills in schools!

Well shoot. I’m looking at the script again. It turns out I got it backward one more time. It’s actually the LGBTQ+ community facing those bills. My bad.

Look, at the end of the day, I just don’t think it’s fair. Yes, my research has revealed that heterosexuals are the overwhelming majority. And yes, science confirms that society is already built entirely around the heterosexual lifestyle. But if they don’t get a parade for successfully doing the bare minimum required to propagate the species, then what was this all for?

I mean, who doesn’t want to live in a world where expecting parents literally risk their lives skydiving out of planes or detonating pipe bombs in public parks just to announce a baby’s gender? That is peak hetero culture, and it deserves a grand stage.

And let’s face it: Isn’t the traditional rainbow a bit… loud? It’s overdone. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue… It’s total sensory overload. It’s time to tamp those colors way down and bring back the true spectrum: The Rainbow of Beige.

Imagine the majesty

The palette: A breathtaking sea of khaki, tan, eggshell, cream, and maybe a daring splash of navy blue if someone’s feeling spicy.

The uniform: An endless horizon of cargo shorts. So many pockets, yet nothing of substance inside them. Paired exclusively with New Balance sneakers and polo shirts tucked in just a little too tight.

The atmosphere: Completely and deliciously low-stakes. There will be absolutely no glitter. Glitter gets into everything; it stays in your carpet for years and, quite frankly, requires too much cleanup. Instead, the floats will be showered in eco-friendly, biodegradable sawdust.

Instead of booming techno music that shakes your ribcage, the parade will feature a steady, comforting playlist of mid-tempo 70s yacht rock and the gentle hum of lawnmowers. The floats won’t be extravagant; they’ll just be highly functional pickup trucks towing sensible mid-sized sedans.

Is a straight parade really too much to ask for? It’s safe. It’s muted. It will be wrapped up by 4:00 PM sharp so everyone can get home, check their 401(k), and beat the dinner rush at the local chain restaurant. Straight people have had a really rough time in life. Not only do they deserve a straight pride, but let’s face it, that is a lifestyle worth celebrating.

Shaley Howard is the author of “Excuse Me, Sir! Memoir of a Butch,” which received the IPPY Silver Award for excellence and Next Generation Indie Finalist Award for LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction. She’s also a small-business owner and activist in Portland, Oregon.

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LGBTQ Nation will be sharing your pictures of Pride throughout May and June. Submit your own if you want to be included!

Over seven years and thousands of tossed balls, “Play Catch With a Dad” has become a ubiquitous part of Pride celebrations everywhere.

John Piermatteo started the sessions in 2019 in his hometown of York, Pennsylvania, at their Unity Fest, inspired in part by “Free Mom Hugs.” Now Piermatteo is joined by scores of dads — most of them straight like him — at as many Pride events across the country. The latest are Pride Nights at MLB games.

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After a Pride Night at Wrigley Field in Chicago last year, the group was invited to play catch at ten Major League games this June, from New York to San Francisco.

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Last week, “Dad” Rabbi Randy Flesher joined “catchling” Clara Dawson on the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis for a session at the Cardinals Pride Night. After that warm-up, Clara even got to throw out the first pitch.

She might have been good luck; the Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-3.

Clara’s star turn — her name filled the Jumbotron looming over right field as she walked to the mound — followed the same simple game of catch that had Dads and catchlings alike sharing tears on turf at Pride celebrations coast-to-coast.

“You did not adequately prepare me for how many people were going to be crying in my arms,” a new Dad volunteer told Piermatteo at the end of one catch-filled day.

Dan Selzer is another Dad recruited by Piermatteo to play catch, who now coordinates other volunteers in Illinois. He shares one of his favorite catch encounters.

“Last year at Pride, I played catch with a participant who (by my guesstimate) was in his late 20s or early 30s,” Selzer recalls. “Like with all catchlings, we tossed the ball back and forth a few times, and then I offered a Dad hug, and told him I loved him and was proud of him. He became a little weepy, then the hug ended, and he went on his way.”

“Ten to fifteen minutes after this interaction, I was at the front of our tent trying to interest more participants to play. I happened to look back at the Dads to see if we had room at that moment for another catchling, and I noticed my earlier one standing behind the tent and a little off to the side. He caught my eye and motioned me over. When I stepped out, he grabbed me in a huge bear hug and lifted me off the ground.”

“Mind you, I’m 5’5”, and this individual was well over 6’ tall.”

“He told me that no one had ever, in his entire life, told him that they were proud of him. We cried on each other’s shoulders for a minute or two, and then he released me. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t tearing up just telling you about this experience.”

Piermatteo says that kind of reaction is common, and the interactions between catchling and Dad can have a profound, lasting effect on kids who may have missed out on an affirming father. Last year’s MLB game session is an example.

“The Chicago Pride Festival in 2025 took place a week after Pride Night at Wrigley Field,” Piermatteo recalls. “Early on that Saturday, a young man was passing by our booth and shouted to his friends, ‘That’s my Dad! That’s the Dad I was telling you about!’ He then ran over and gave me a big hug.”

“What we have learned is that for us Dads, these encounters might last a few minutes, and then we are on to the next kiddo. But for the members of the community that engage us, those few minutes mean so much more.”

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Republicans are making accusations of being gay, trans, or just not masculine enough, the central issue in the Senate race in Texas this year, accusing state Rep. and Democratic candidate James Talarico of being too light in his loafers because he supports trans people’s rights and because he is, according to Republicans, a secret vegan.

Earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined in the attacks on Talarico and said, “If you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, ‘masculine’ would not be one of them.”

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MS NOW host Jen Psaki asked Talarico about Cruz’s statement, pointing out that the gender bullying is also an attack on LGBTQ+ people generally.

(Talarico himself is straight and cisgender and is not a vegan.)

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Talarico talked about his father and said that he used to mow the neighbor’s lawn because that neighbor was an elderly widow. “Because that’s what a man does,” Talarico said.

“Here’s what real men don’t do,” Talarico continued. “They don’t lie and cheat their way through life. They don’t sell their soul to the highest bidder. They don’t steal from other people in order to enrich themselves.”

These comments were likely directed at his opponent in the Senate race, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has faced numerous corruption allegations for decades.

“Real men serve others, weak men serve themselves. And so I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man. I don’t think Paxton or Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.”

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Maryland District Court Judge Julie Rubin has denied a request to turn a challenge against one of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) requests for trans youth’s private health information into a class action lawsuit, which would have allowed the case to quash the subpoenas seeking private health records nationwide.

Trans advocates are fighting the DOJ’s campaign of subpoenas, which they say is an effort to end gender-affirming care through “fear.”

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“This is pure intimidation,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), who represented the families in the case. “This administration has targeted this very small group of families, families with transgender kids. This administration does not like transgender people. They want to stop this healthcare, and they are abusing their power to literally try to intimidate and harass doctors and parents in order to further that political goal.”

The motion was brought by 11 families, represented by lawyers from NCLR and GLAD Law, and Judge Rubin’s decision was released after a hearing on Tuesday.

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The class-action lawsuit was an attempt to consolidate the litigation resulting from the over 20 administrative subpoenas issued by the DOJ. Hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors have been pressured to release extensive details about their providers, patients, and any treatments. That has now escalated with the DOJ seeking court orders to enforce the subpoenas and empaneling a grand jury to issue criminal subpoenas.

As it stands, every subpoena must be challenged in court individually, putting pressure on families, hospitals, and advocacy groups to play subpoena whack-a-mole to protect patient data. The movants – those filing the motion – asserted that “absent classwide protection, DOJ will continue extracting transgender minors’ private health information hospital by hospital, faster than any individual can move to quash.” A similar motion for a narrower class certification focused on New York hospitals is pending in a different court.

Had the class been certified, it would have meant that the subpoenas issued nationwide could be quashed without individual cases and without the risk of inconsistent rulings.

Judge Rubin, while denying class certification, showed sympathy for the movants and is one of the multiple judges who already quashed a DOJ subpoena earlier this year, specifically the one targeting Children’s National Hospital (CNH) in D.C. She ruled that the subpoena represented “overreach untethered to any lawful purpose.”

The DOJ claimed in the Tuesday hearing that the subpoenas were “part of a nationwide investigation into the off-label use of puberty blockers and hormones for minors.” However, it is worth noting that prescribing medication off-label is not a crime and is commonly done when, for example, aspirin is prescribed to help reduce the risks of heart attacks and strokes. The DOJ also argued that the judge could not grant the certification because “there is no precedent for a single district to exercise nationwide supervision over the department’s subpoenas.”

Ultimately, the judge’s denial of certification turned on a technical question of whether certain statutes were applicable. “The question then is whether Rule 23, and the class action vehicle, is applicable here,” Judge Rubin wrote in her decision. “The court is not persuaded that it is.”

The judge seemed to agree that there was a need for some sort of relief, as shown by her previous decision to quash the DOJ’s subpoena, but had to stop short of certifying the class. “Movants’ request for class treatment is simply an ill fit for the matter before the court and the relief they seek. The court will therefore deny the Motion to the extent it seeks class certification.”

Minter noted during his appeal for the certification that “this happens to be about this specific group of families, but this could be any family in any state targeted for any reason (because) this administration decides it doesn’t like something and it’s against a particular type of health care.”

There was still a win for the movants in this case as, while the class certification was denied, Rubin did reaffirm the decision to quash the DOJ’s subpoena to CNH without mincing words, saying, “The Government seeks to fulfill its policy agenda through compliance born of fear. Moreover, in the view of the court, the CNH Subpoena is the classic impermissible fishing expedition.”

In those individual cases against subpoenas, the plaintiffs have repeatedly succeeded in having the DOJ’s subpoenas quashed when taking them to court. Most recently, a federal judge has temporarily blocked all California hospitals from producing documents in response to DOJ criminal subpoenas. California is currently reviewing Assembly Bill 1930, which was filed in response to these subpoenas and would prevent California hospitals from releasing information in response to them.

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Since Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) became the state Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate, the GOP has focused almost exclusively on discrediting him by attacking his masculinity and accusing him of being gay or trans.

And the jabs don’t seem to be slowing down. Earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on Fox New and joined the chorus of conservative voices claiming that Talarico is simply not man enough to be a senator.

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“I gotta say, if you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, ‘masculine’ would not be one of them,” Cruz said of Talarico. “I mean, this guy, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather. This is also a guy who – his campaign – he ran a vegan, no meat campaign because meat is destroying the world. He’s opposed to oil and gas. This is the Democrat party!” 

Talarico faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the general election and has shown signs that he could win. In response, Republicans have been calling him transgender because he supports trans rights; saying that he is dating a man (he is not); and calling him a “freak” and a “creep,” words often used to attack LGBTQ+ people.

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said last month that Talarico is the Democrats’ “first transgender senate candidate” and then told Fox News host Jesse Watters – who has a long history of discussing his personal insecurities with masculinity on air – that Talarico is “clearly transitioning into a female.”

Miller joked that Talarico “doesn’t belong in the Senate but in a cabaret show,” which was a homophobic joke since gay people are often associated with musical theater.

Folks on social media have ruthlessly mocked Cruz both for thinking that attacking Talarico’s physical strength is a useful tactic and also for thinking he, himself, could be considered a beacon of masculinity.

Many pointed out that Cruz fled the state for Mexico during a terrifying winter storm in 2021 that knocked out power and gas to millions, stranding Texans without heat, water, and shelter. The anti-LGBTQ+ senator was shamed for flying to Cancun with his family as his constituents suffered.

Others slammed Cruz for criticizing someone else’s masculinity after he maintained staunch support for the current president, despite the fact that he insulted Cruz’s wife’s appearance in a 2016 social media post.

But according to Stephen Miller, Texans are “some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women,” so they will naturally vote for “a real conservative, patriotic, god-fearing, and truly be loved statewide figure” like Paxton instead of “somebody with that much soy” like Talarico.

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In his June 9 interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, Donald Trump returned again to his loathsome “Big Lie” that he won the 2020 presidential election due to massive fraud in the states that declared Biden as the winner.

Ever since November 3, 2020, Trump has sung this Faustian leitmotif far off-key as a constant refrain to excite and re-energize his sycophantic base and to protect his certifiable, fragile narcissist ego from total collapse.

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Fraudulent elections are, according to political scientist Lawrence Britt, one of the 14 enumerated characteristics of fascism:

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism,

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2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights,

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats [of the country’s problems] as a unifying cause, 4. Rampant sexism,

5. Supremacy of the military,

6. Controlled mass media,

7. Obsession with national security,

8. Religion and government are intertwined,

9. Corporate power is protected,

10. Labor power is suppressed,

11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts,

12. Obsession with crime and punishment,

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption, and

14. Fraudulent elections

Trump checks the boxes in Britt’s characteristics, but of the last one, not only did he pressure election officials in various states to give him unearned votes (like in Georgia), but he also pressured his first-term Vice President Mike Pence not to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Trump not only attempted to illegally fix the election in his favor, but he also reprises his perpetual “Big Lie” whenever his endorsed primary and election candidates face defeat.

Though Trump’s “Big Lie” accused the Democratic Party of “rigging” the 2020 election, all his lies have been big and dangerous, with possibly the biggest being his promise to “Make America Great Again.”

On Meet the Press, Welker asked Trump about his so-called “weaponization fund” from which he intends to give large amounts of money to supporters whom he has deemed as having been unfairly treated by Biden’s Department of Justice, namely, those arrested on insurrection charges for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“They had FBI agents ushering them into the building,” argued Trump on Face the Nation. “They had FBI go into the building. Those people are walking around, they’re looking, ‘Oh, isn’t this nice?’ They weren’t in—they were being ushered into the building. The people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated.”

Welker replied, “All right, this is, just to be very clear, there’s no evidence of what you’re saying…”

Trump responded, “There’s a lot of evidence….There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.”

Welker said, “Well, it’s not been presented in a court of law.”

Trump then said, “The election [of 2020] was rigged. It was a dirty election.”

He went on to accuse Democrats of stealing the recent Los Angeles mayoral election primary away from his endorsed candidate, Republican reality TV personality Spencer Pratt. After some give-and-take on the California primary, Trump returned to his standard attack of demeaning women journalists of color by accusing Welker.

He said, “They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.”

Welker replied, “To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.”

Trump then said, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.”

Following his insults, Trump stormed off the stage and out of the NBC studios.

Trump seemed to get his “Big Lie” methods from other of his admired autocrats.

Adolph Hitler infamously said, “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a Big Lie than to a small one,” and, “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”

Trump (encapsulated in his alt-right, alt-facts, alt-universe), like other authoritarians, uses “Machiavellian” tactics in his single-mindedness, cunning, plotting, and unscrupulous — often vicious — actions to advance his career, enact his policies, and enhance his power. To Trump, the ends certainly justify the means, no matter who gets hurt.

Throughout his business career and into his presidency, Trump has simultaneously vilified the courts while using lawsuits as a means of intimidation to get his way and to vanquish his opposition. He continually threatens to employ libel laws to sue the “crooked and lying” media. We will most likely see more of these threats emerging from Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda (a.k.a. “White House Office of Communications”).

The major wealthier media outlets have the privilege and ability to stand up to Trump’s coercion, though some choose not to when they are dependent on Trump and his administration to grant them mergers or buyouts of other media companies.

Some of the smaller organizations who run on very tight budgets and depend on volunteer labor have no such privileges. For many of these smaller outlets, even the threat of a harassing lawsuit will result in their self-censoring. 

The problem is that the Big Lie is now so embedded within the far-right-facing MAGA insignia that it represents a call to action, a call to take the country back to an uncontested white Christian nativist nation, the U.S. equivalent of a Nazi-era Aryan race where non-Aryans must either be “put in their place,” expelled, or terminated.

The outcome of Trump’s lies have resulted in over a million people dead from a pandemic, widespread economic collapse, increasing wage and health inequalities between the super rich and everyone else, and insurrectionists attempting to hold the government and our democratic institutions hostage.

And for what? For a narcissistic sociopath to gain and hold onto power through appealing to white grievance politics.

The post-Trump Senate impeachment trial in 2021 brought no degree of justice since the perpetrator has now returned to the scene of the crime (the Oval Office) with more power than ever. As his public ratings have plummeted to new depths, it seems perfectly clear that his fellow colluders and actors in perpetuating the Big Lie will suffer consequences come November.

I’ve been struck time and time again by Trump’s lies and deceptions throughout the past post-factual nine years since he first announced his campaign for the presidency.

Most of us have read by now that The Washington Post recorded 30,573 “untruths” during his first term (averaging approximately 21 invalid claims a day). The most egregious claim, which had deadly consequences, was the “Big Lie”, which resulted in his staunchest supporters launching an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s second term is no different for this Misstater-(Liar)-in-Chief. As the lies continue piling up, as his attempts to grab more power and wealth through grifting soars, he again has attempted to redraw maps and redefine the very definition of “winning.”

President Donald Trump, as the clinically compulsive liar that he is, shouted yet another of his big lies that he and Netanyahu decided to go to war with Iran because it served our country’s self-interest due to the “imminent threat” Iran posed to the United States and to the world community. But there was no imminent threat.

Trump lied that Iran was very close to producing a nuclear weapon. That is not true. And now, Trump is literally asleep at the wheel (or at least at his desk in the Oval Office).

Enormous problems endanger our nation and the world: wars, inflation, unaffordable healthcare and childcare costs, ever-rising energy prices, a global climate crisis, poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, starvation, spreading diseases, destructive animal parasites, democratic instability at home and abroad, gun violence, and so many others.

Instead of tackling these problems head-on as a president of the United States must, Donald Trump has been fixated instead on his vanity projects of constructing an expensive and unnecessary White House ballroom, refurbishing the Reflection Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, covering the roads between the Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac River, erecting the tallest victory arch (the Arch de Trump) near Arlington National Cemetery to overcompensate for Trump’s failed manhood, and other tacky and completely illegal extravagances.

How long will it take for Trump’s supporters to finally realize they have been duped by this con-artist who sold them his snake-oil-of-a-campaign-and-presidency of little value, which has had disastrous consequences?

How much longer can Trump’s enablers, both his passive and active supporters, understand that they are hurting the country and sacrificing their own integrity and sense of dignity for the mere promise of a few shiny coins of glittering gold and the hot glow of fleeting power?

When voters relinquish their freedom for some sort of promised security, we are left with nothing at all.

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It can be hard to work out what might be going through Donald Trump’s head at the best of times, but lately his actions have seemed to be increasingly bizarre and reckless. 

However, all of those actions become much easier to understand with one simple perspective shift: Trump knows he is dying, he doesn’t have much time, and he won’t have to face any consequences, at least not in this life.

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Trump often doesn’t seem too stressed about consequences, and that’s felt especially true since he won the 2024 election. But over those four years out of office, he came close to facing very real consequences. He was tried and found liable and guilty in both civil and criminal court. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that he was well on his way to being bankrupt, imprisoned, or both. The only thing that saved him was the presidency.

If Trump leaves the White House again, he’ll be at risk of those consequences again, along with all the other ones that he has racked up over the last few months. While Steve Bannon has become the latest supporter of Trump seeking an unconstitutional third term, and Trump still refuses to rule that out, it starts to feel more likely that Trump will avoid walking out of the White House not by changing the Constitution, but by shuffling off his mortal coil while still in residence.

Trump’s health is clearly failing. He’s been seen struggling with stairs and has even mused that Obama was better at navigating them. His cognitive health might well be in decline, and his instances of random word association in public comments appear to be getting worse.

While Trump and his cronies claim that his medical reports generally show that he is in the finest health any person has ever been in, the number of those reports recently should raise an eyebrow. In early October, he had what he called a “semi-annual physical” at the Walter Reed National Medical Center. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it was a “routine yearly checkup.” The problem is that he already had his annual physical in April.

Those checkups included an MRI at Walter Reed. “It was perfect,” Trump said, claiming “the doctor said [it] was some of the best reports, for the age, they’ve ever seen.” While MRIs are often used to rule out possible medical concerns, they’re rarely used when there are no concerns to begin with. 

Trump has also claimed to have aced another cognitive test, making comments that echo his “person, woman, man, camera, TV” debacle. 

The White House has not released comments on the MRI or the cognitive test. All of that might be fine, but Trump has historically overstated his health (with the help of his doctors), and with everything else, it becomes part of a suspicious pattern.

Death is clearly on Trump’s mind. He’s been talking about heaven to a concerning degree, working on trying to get into heaven by ending the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and he’s been reflecting on the fact that he won’t be getting through those pearly gates. And if he’s not expecting to get into heaven, his consolation plan seems to be to make sure he leaves some sort of irrevocable mark on the world, whatever sort of mark that might be.

There are plenty of signs of a desire to plant his legacy. His wild bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize has been particularly extravagant (and unsuccessful). Since the start of his presidency, he has hit the ground running, trying to make major (and horrific) changes through executive orders, rushing through everything he wants to do, and putting the military on our streets. There’s a reason that it feels like he’s done quite so much damage in the past nine months.

But no sign of his desire to leave his mark is more explicit than the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Trump’s plan to build a ballroom was already over the top and set to change the landscape of the White House (and that was after he already paved over the Rose Garden). Demolishing the East Wing takes that re-landscaping far beyond what anyone could have expected.

That ballroom was never going to be finished during Trump’s presidency. It would have been for those who came after. And a construction project can be stopped, or at least redirected. 

But knocking down a large part of one of the most symbolic and historic buildings in the United States? That’s one for the ages. It can’t be rebuilt. 

If Trump dies tomorrow, he will always have changed that landscape. Construction requires time and building permits, but destruction can apparently be rushed through before anyone can complain about not having the required permissions. The hurried nature of the whole project signals that Trump is worried he might not be here to see the progress if they wait even just a little bit longer.

Why is Trump not worried about the consequences of violating the boundaries of his executive powers? Why is Trump not worried about the consequences of shutting down the federal government and wiping out entire departments? Why is Trump not worried about the consequences for his blatant corruption and taking bribes from Qatar? Why is Trump not worried about the consequences of sharing videos of himself wearing a crown as a king while he defecates on protestors from a fighter jet?

Because Trump doesn’t think he will live to see those consequences.

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The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) suspended tenured art therapy professor Savneet Talwar after a student complained about her assignment asking students to develop an ethical treatment plan for a hypothetical queer, Muslim woman living in the United States, The Guardian reported.

The two-page assignment mentioned the hypothetical woman’s case study, her family history, relationships, and legal immigration status. The assignment mentioned that the woman “felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians” and felt “critical of her home government’s limited response,” but it contained no additional references to Palestine or Palestinians, and no mention of Israel, the publication noted.

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She came out to a homophobic student. The school quickly forced her to resign.

Soon after issuing the assignment, the school’s dean called Talwar to ask whether she had assigned work about Palestine. The school’s provost then called Talwar into an “urgent” meeting, and issued a message the following day stating that Talwar had been put on paid leave and was forbidden from talking to students or colleagues about the issue.

A letter to the professor from the school official said that she had given “an academic assignment that focused solely on the issues of a Muslim woman with strong sympathies for the Palestinian cause.” A school official told Talwar that her assignment might constitute “discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation.”

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The Jewish-Israeli student who complained about the assignment had already issued multiple complaints about alleged antisemitism in the school’s art therapy department. Department faculty were subsequently forced to undergo anti-bias training to address the departmental “climate.”

In a May 13 letter explaining the circumstances around Tawal’s suspension, school officials said that Talwar had previously mentioned the December 14, 2025 Bondi Beach terror attack in Australia without acknowledging the role of antisemitism in the attack. The letter also said that Tawal had once encouraged the Jewish-Israeli student to “consider” attending a lecture from a guest described as a “strong anti-Zionist activist.”

Talwar denied that her assignment was antisemitic or discriminatory in any way. She said she plans to file a formal employment discrimination complaint against the school.

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Jake Lang — a racist Republican candidate for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat who was jailed for allegedly assaulting Capitol Police officers during the January 6, 2021, riots — is in jail on a $1 million bond for allegedly “making terroristic threats” by threatening to harm a Black teenager.

Police booked Lang into Dallas County jail after allegedly stating that if a North Texas jury did not find 19-year-old Black teen Karmelo Anthony guilty for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at an April 2, 2025 track meet, he “would take care of it himself,” The Dallas Morning News reported. A jury did indeed find Anthony guilty.

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Earlier this month, Lang was arrested for criminal trespass attached to a “sparsely attended” “Protect White Americans” rally outside of the stadium where the stabbing occurred, Raw Story reported. Lang broke into the stadium and recorded a video showing a dark streak on the ground where he claimed that Metcalf had bled out after the stabbing. However, school officials noted that the stabbing and Metcalf’s subsequent death had occurred in other areas of the stadium.

Last January, Lang threw a Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute during a racist and antisemitic rally that he held outside of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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At the rally, Lang declared, “Congressmen and women that have been taking AIPAC money, we suggest you stop now before the crusaders really start…. Treasonous traitors will be hanging from the gallows, rightfully and justly prosecuted and hung for treason.”

He also said, “White Christian men are not gonna sit around while [AIPAC and pro-Jewish activists] turn our children into a bunch of [n-word]-lovers.”

Despite Lang’s racist display, last January, a Black transgender woman helped rescue him from an angry mob of 100 anti-racist counterprotestors in Minneapolis.

In that incident, Lang had promised to lead a march through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood (which has Minneapolis’ highest concentration of Somali-American residents) before burning a Quran on the steps of City Hall. But he reportedly didn’t get to do either because the counter-protestors — who outnumbered the 10 attendees at Lang’s event — cornered him outside City Hall before attacking him and chasing him away.

The anti-racist counterprotestors threw objects and water balloons at Lang before a 30-year-old Black Minneapolis resident named Isaiah Blackwell helped Lang escape.

Trump pardoned Lang after he had served four years in prison for attacking a U.S. Capitol police officer during the January 6, 2021, riots.

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