Brooklyn police arrested 38-year-old Jonathan Fernandez for allegedly stabbing his 41-year-old transgender fiancee Eryka Caldwell to death in her Bushwick, New York apartment on Sunday morning. Caldwell had reportedly tried to kick Fernandez out of the apartment before the slaying, The New York Post reported. Fernandez’s lawyer is now claiming that she attacked him with a knife first and he killed her in self-defense.

Caldwell texted 911 on Sunday morning. When police arrived at her apartment around 8:50 a.m., they reportedly heard Caldwell screaming and yelling, “Help me, he’s stabbing me!” Police had to enter the apartment by pushing in a window air-conditioning unit and climbing through. There, they found Caldwell’s body had been stabbed multiple times, with her throat slit. Fernandez reportedly sat on the couch with her bloodied body at his feet.

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Police said that they had previously checked on domestic disputes between the couple. Fernandez has been charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon and is currently awaiting a court hearing in Riker’s Island Jail without bail. He faced arrests all the way back to 2015 for robbery, burglary, and theft of service charges. He had also allegedly assaulted Caldwell in 2024, law enforcement sources told the Post.

In his Monday court hearing, Fernandez’s defense lawyer claimed that Caldwell began swinging a knife at Fernandez first, leading him to defend himself with a knife. The lawyer requested a psychiatric hearing for his client.

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On Christmas Day 2022, Caldwell announced that she and Fernandez had become engaged. In a birthday post from April of that year, Caldwell wrote of him, “Beyond my dad he’s one of the only men that has loved me unconditionally! He’s not a perfect man but show me one who is!”

“He is one of the most selfless, sensitive, and generous people I know!” Caldwell wrote. “Thanks baby for loving me unconditionally even though I’m getting old!”

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A post shared by Eryka Caldwell (@euphoric_intentions)

Caldwell’s sister, Contessa, told the Post, “She tried to find the good in everybody…. If there was just a monster or evil, she still tried to find the smallest good in that person. And this time, [there] just was no good for her to find or her to fix.”

The sister said that police had visited the couple for at least two instances of domestic violence in the past, but while she was relocated to an abuse shelter, he never went to jail for the alleged abuse. Caldwell moved to New York City from Kentucky at age 18 and had lived in the apartment where she died since March.

“When it came to her relationships, if it was abusive or anything, she didn’t allow me to know,” the sister said. “I just wish she would have reached out for help or told somebody in code or something. Like, what was going on, so she could have gotten the help or somebody could have come down there.”

Caldwell recently celebrated her 41st birthday on April 10, and had made recent Instagram posts expressing love for her mother, who died on October 8, 2023. In January of that year, Caldwell announced that she had graduated from Bellevue University with a bachelor’s degree.

One Instagram commenter said that Caldwell was now in the afterlife with her mother. Another wrote, “You were truly a blessing! Your Soul was so beautiful and your light was radiant! You were a light that shined bright. A radiance that everyone felt. We were family! You were my Muva! I will love you always and forever! Until we see each other again. I love you.”

Approximately 54% of trans and non-binary individuals have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). That’s higher than the 41% of women and 26% of men in the general population who have experienced such violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

A 2024 HRC report found that 75% of transgender people murdered in the prior year were people of color — 30% knew their attackers.

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Colorado Police last Thursday arrested Hunter Rivera, the 24-year-old now-former chairman of the Weld County Republican Party, for allegedly trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a child. Rivera resigned immediately following his arrest.

Agents from the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office posed online as minors offering sexual acts for sale. Investigators charged Rivera with soliciting a child prostitute, internet luring of a child, soliciting to arrange a minor prostitute in a cybercrime, and attempted sexual assault on a child, Colorado Politics reported.

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Rivera once chaired the Northern Colorado chapter of Young Republicans, a group whose leaders in other states have been exposed for making racist and antisemitic statements.

“Children are not property to be bought or sold,” Sheriff John Feyen said in a statement. “Human trafficking is modern day slavery, and we won’t tolerate it in Larimer County. I hope this operation sends a strong message. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you try to hurt kids in our community, you will be held accountable.”

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The Republican Party and its supporters have long baselessly accused LGBTQ+ people, drag queens, and their allies of “grooming” children for sexual abuse, despite many of the party’s own members being arrested for child sex crimes.

Conservative lawmakers from Weld County, such as former State Representative Stephen Humphrey, have previously sponsored legislation attempting to restrict marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples.

In 2024, the Colorado State Republican Party was led by Dave Williams, a former state representative who called LGBTQ+ people “evil” and “woke creeps”; said that all Pride flags should be burned; said that Pride “harms children and undermines parental authority”; and sent GOP emails referring to LGBTQ+ Americans as “barbaric,” “creeps,” “degenerates,” “godless,” “groomers,” “predators,” “radicals,” and “reprobates.”

In August of that year, the state party voted to remove him as its leader for his extremist views and for causing divisions within the party. But he challenged his ouster, leading to a complicated legal battle. His eventual replacement, Brita Horn, served from March 2025 until her resignation in April 2026. The seat currently remains empty.

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President Donald Trump is seeking someone — anyone — to run to help unseat anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) after she criticized Trump and campaigned for a congressman he opposes. However, the filing deadline to run against her has passed, and she’s highly likely to win re-election in her deep-red congressional district.

“Is anyone interested in running against Weak Minded Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District? You remember Lauren moved to the District when it became obvious that she couldn’t win in her original Congressional District (The Third!) — A Carpetbagger, indeed!” Trump wrote in a May 16 Truth Social post.

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“Boebert is campaigning for the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman in the History of our Country, Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, and anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary fight!” Trump continued, adding that he would withdraw his previous endorsement of Boebert “if the right person came along.”

“Just let me know, or announce your Candidacy, and I will be there for you!” Trump said, apparently unaware of the already-passed March filing deadline for candidates seeking to oppose Boebert in the June 30 Republican primary.

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Boebert is highly likely to win, seeing as her congressional district has elected a Republican representative every two-year election cycle since 1972 (except once in 2009). However, while Boebert’s predecessor, former Rep. Ken Buck (R), won the district by 21- to 24- point margins, Boebert won her 2024 election there by only an 11-point margin.

While recent polling shows Coloradans and Americans in general souring on Republicans, it’s unclear whether this shift would enable a Democrat to win in Bobert’s district, which The Denver Post has called “ruby red.”

“Yes, I saw the President’s post. No I’m not mad or offended,” Boebert wrote on X last Saturday. “I knew the risks when I agreed to stand by my friend Thomas Massie. I was, and will be, America First, America Always, and MAGA.”

Boebert initially fashioned herself as one of Trump’s biggest congressional supporters, but has increasingly opposed him as of late.

She voiced frustration last December over Trump vetoing legislation to deliver clean drinking water to 50,000 southeastern Coloradans, saying, “[He] decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously,” even though many voters in the region “enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections.”

She has also campaigned for the re-election of Rep. Massie (R-KY), an anti-LGBTQ+ congressman who recently jammed with racist and antisemitic podcaster David Reilly.

Bobert joined Massie, “proud transphobe” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), and now-former-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as the only four Republicans to back a discharge petition forcing Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its investigation files on deceased millionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (who Trump once had a close friendship with).

Trump had long railed against the discharge petition, calling interest in Epstein’s crime a Democratic “hoax.” Massie and other Congress members have accused Trump‘s DOJ of not releasing all of the files, even though a congressional law required the department to do so by December 19, 2025.

“I want to just — give me somebody with a warm body to beat Massie,” Trump said last March at an event in Massie’s district. Trump eventually got that warm body and endorsed Massie’s primary opponent, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein.

Massie’s reelection campaign recently released a toxically homophobic and transphobic ad accusing Gallrein of being “bought and paid for by the LGBTQ Mafia,” supporting “freak values,” and standing “with the weirdos.” The ad portrays any support of LGBTQ+ issues, including marriage equality, as extreme. It includes pictures of trans people and drag queens – including Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke (D) and Texas nonbinary activist Brigitte Bandit – as if they’re supposed to scare viewers.

Massie’s primary election is today. Gallrein is currently leading him in the polls, but only slightly. Political advertisers have invested over $32 million in the race, NBC News reported — mostly Trump-aligned groups and pro-Israel organizations against Massie‚ making it “the most expensive House primary in history.”

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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the latest anti-trans bill to come out of the red state legislature. The law, which McMaster signed last Friday, will banish transgender students who want to use public school restrooms to use porta-potties outside school buildings instead.

House Bill 4756, entitled “the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act,” requires multi-person bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities in public K-12 schools and public colleges in the state to be designated for use by one sex only. Sex in the bill is defined as biological sex observed or verified at birth, ABC Columbia reports.

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The law allows trans students to use single-occupancy restrooms, but if the school lacks one, schools can designate porta-potties outside as a single-occupancy restroom. Since state law forbids trans students from using school restrooms that align with their gender identity — and some trans students are fearful of using restrooms that do not — the new law forces them to use these temporary outdoor restrooms.

Republican lawmakers, however, have deemed porta-potties a suitable alternative to restrooms inside public school buildings, casting trans students outside if they request the accommodation in a latter-day “separate but equal” attack on trans rights.

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House Bill 4756 “requires every public school, college, and university in the state to provide a single-user restroom – deeming porta potties as an acceptable single-user restroom option,” the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) wrote on Instagram ahead of McMaster signing the law.

“This bill will do nothing to make our schools safer. Rather, it will make using the bathroom a difficult and even dangerous experience for trans and nonbinary youth, who are extremely likely to be bullied and harassed when using the bathroom,” CSE continued, urging the governor to veto the “harmful” bill.

One Instagram commenter replied, “Segregation. It’s not about the bathrooms, just like it wasn’t about the water fountains. It’s about discrimination.”

The law reaches even further into the regulation of how “biological” males and females interact in public school settings, dictating sleeping arrangements for students on campus or school-sponsored overnight trips.

Now, students can’t be required to share sleeping quarters with trans classmates — or, as the law designates them, “members of the opposite sex” — unless they are family members. It also requires public colleges and universities to offer students the option to live with roommates of the same sex, a practice already common on most college campuses despite the new mandate.

The law sets a deadline for schools to implement the legislation by the start of the 2026-2027 academic year. Institutions that fail to do so face a 25% cut in state school funding.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), an ardently “proud transphobe” and candidate for governor of South Carolina, hailed the new law, writing in a statement, “This is a commonsense law that protects our daughters in South Carolina’s schools and universities. Men do not belong in women’s bathrooms. Men do not belong in women’s locker rooms. South Carolina got this right.”

Mace led the campaign to ban Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first out transgender member of Congress, from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol, while Mace’s public outbursts over her opposition to trans identity have called Mace’s mental health into question.

Mace is currently polling in fourth place in her state’s six-way Republican primary for governor.

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More details are emerging in the shocking stabbing death of Juniper Blessing, the University of Washington trans freshman found murdered in the laundry room of her off-campus housing complex in Seattle ten days ago.

On Monday, the prime suspect in the killing was charged with first-degree murder.

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Blessing, 19, was discovered a week ago Sunday around 10:00 p.m. by another resident of the apartment complex, police say. She was stabbed over 40 times, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Cops were called to the off-campus Nordheim Court apartments Sunday night, where they found Blessing unresponsive on the floor. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

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Surveillance video placed a suspect in the laundry room at the time of the killing. He remained inside the room for several minutes before later exiting alone.

Still images of a Black man, about 5’6″-5’8″ tall, wearing a dark blue vest, glasses, and a beard, were made public by police and earned several tips, as well as a call from the man’s brother. He identified the suspect as Christopher Leahy, 31.

An attorney for Leahy called the police and arranged for his surrender. Leahy turned himself in to the Bellevue Police Department on Wednesday evening, accompanied by his parents and the lawyer.

On Monday, Leahy was charged with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing. Charging documents allege Leahy acted “with premeditated intent” and say he was armed with “a knife or similarly shaped instrument.”

In addition to the surveillance video, Leahy was connected to the scene through fingerprints recovered in blood smears on the outside of the laundry room door, the charging documents state.

Investigators say Leahy had been prowling the Ravenna neighborhood in and around the Nordheim Court apartments for several days prior to Blessing’s killing, and after.

“Police indicate that there were attempts by the defendant to try to enter private homes in Ravenna in the days before the homicide,” Casey McNerthney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told KOMO News. “There was at least one other campus building that police say he attempted to get into before the death of Juniper on the 10th.”

Tracking apps and video recordings placed Leahy “in campus buildings and attempting to enter private homes in Ravenna prior to the murder and back near the murder scene two days after the murder,” court documents reveal. 

Investigators say another UW student could have been Leahy’s victim ahead of Blessing’s murder. They believe Leahy had been inside the apartment complex earlier in the evening, allegedly following another student into the same laundry room roughly 15 minutes before Blessing was stabbed. That student told police a man matching Leahy’s description followed her into the room, claiming he was waiting for laundry. He eventually left.  

Including a deadly weapon enhancement, Leahy faces 22 to 29 years in prison. Prosecutors requested bail of $10 million, citing Leahy as a flight risk and a danger to the community.

King County prosecutors say police have yet to provide evidence that Blessing’s murder was a hate crime, and stopped short of assigning a motive for the killing. Documents referenced Leahy’s “uncontrolled rage evidenced by horrific injuries he inflicted on Juniper Blessing.”  

Blessing, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, was studying atmospheric and climate science at UW, with minors in philosophy and music. She was a talented singer, according to family and friends.

Memorials in Santa Fe and on the UW campus described her as “pure love” and “full of life.”

Blessing graduated from New Mexico School for the Arts in 2024 and knew multiple languages, including German, French, and Italian. She had a five-octave vocal range.

“She was so, so happy to be doing her craft,” Claudia Kanaha, a fellow UW Chorale member, told the Seattle Times.

Following Leahy’s charging, Blessing’s family released a statement, thanking “the Seattle community, whose response to this tragedy has been overwhelming, the community of Santa Fe, and LGBTQIA2S+ communities and advocates across the country who are memorializing and keeping vigil for Juniper by saying her name with love, honor, and respect.

“Thank you for standing beside our family as we grieve the loss of our beloved Juniper. Every gesture of support is another candle lit and another flower which blooms in Juniper’s memory.”

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Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHC) suspended most gender-affirming care for trans youth in January after a threat from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against hospitals that provide such care. Now the Colorado Supreme Court has ordered CHC to resume its care program, ruling that suspending care violates the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

“Although CHC acted reluctantly and expressed no animus toward transgender patients, the action it chose to take in response to the Kennedy Declaration specifically targeted transgender youth patients,” Justice William Hood of the Colorado Supreme Court said in his decision. “The Kennedy Declaration may have influenced CHC’s decision, but it doesn’t absolve CHC of responsibility.”

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Children’s Hospital Colorado was one of many hospitals across the country that suspended its gender-affirming care programs for trans youth after Trump signed an executive order against the practice. CHC first suspended care in February 2025 as an early compliance measure, but it resumed care after a federal judge blocked Trump’s order.

Since then, CHC has also become one of many hospitals to receive a subpoena for patient records related to gender-affirming care for minors. In December 2025, Kennedy released a declaration that gender-affirming care was neither safe nor effective and suggested that hospitals that provided it could be punished. CHC was then referred to the Office of the Attorney General for investigation, and in January, the hospital announced it had suspended gender-affirming care for those under the age of 18.

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The patients affected by this suspension filed a class-action lawsuit against CHC. While a lower court initially declined to grant an injunction to restore care, the Colorado Supreme Court this week issued a 5-2 decision in favor of the plaintiffs. The decision now sends the case back to the lower court, ordering them to issue “a preliminary injunction directing CHC to restore its offering of medically necessary medical gender-affirming care.”

In his decision, Justice Hood noted that the suspension violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). Because the hospital was still providing hormone treatment and puberty blockers to cis patients, suspending the gender-affirming care programs meant denying a treatment only to a protected class. “CHC’s decision to suspend medical gender-affirming care to youth denies petitioners the full and equal enjoyment of services based on gender identity,” Hood wrote.

A large part of the hospital’s concern with continuing gender-affirming care was based on the larger effects of the loss of funding. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke all federal funding from institutions providing such care to trans youth, which would mean hospitals losing all Medicaid and Medicare funding and potentially losing the ability to operate at all. That was why the lower court had declined to issue the injunction, with Denver District Judge Erick F.H. Englert concerned that federal punishments “would pose a grave danger to the public interest that is greater than the danger to plaintiffs.”

However, Hood had little time for that argument. He noted, “Because any potential harm to the public’s interest in access to health care is speculative, and because the General Assembly has stated that it is in the public’s interest to prohibit discrimination against individuals based on gender identity and to protect those individuals’ access to medical care, we conclude that the trial court erred by finding that petitioners failed to satisfy the public-interest factor.”

He also indicated that if the hospital resumed gender-affirming care and the Trump administration tried to revoke funding as punishment, CHC would have “other avenues to address it.” He goes on to enumerate the possible responses to a range of moves that the federal government could make. Notably, halting gender-affirming care is not one of them.

Rather, he argued that closing down a program for a marginalized group to avoid a potential risk of having to close the larger facility went against the logic of the society that we have built.

“We conclude that… strict numerical comparison of affected individuals isn’t appropriate when the individuals seeking injunctive relief are part of a protected class and seeking an injunction because of discrimination based on that protected class. Were it otherwise, minority groups would always lose. But that is not the law. On the contrary, that’s precisely why we have protected classes.”

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Pete Buttigieg has been getting a lot of barbs in against Vice President J.D. Vance at various speaking events and interviews recently.

Just this past weekend, while appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, he joked about Vance’s ill-fated trip to Hungary.

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“Unfortunately, this is not my grandmother’s Democrat Party, right? This is not the party of sort of socially conservative, patriotic people,” Vance said in a Fox News interview clip that CNN’s Dana Bash played for Buttigieg. “It’s now the party of left-wing radicalism.”

“Would he be a formidable opponent in 2028?” Bash asked Buttigieg.

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“Well, look, there’s been a bit of a stink, politically, around the Trump administration generally and J.D. Vance politically,” Buttigieg responded. “He tends not to be very successful when he’s out campaigning for people.”

“Even overseas,” Buttigieg continued, teeing up a dig. “It seems to have been the kind of nail in the coffin of Viktor Orban in Hungary.” Buttigieg was referring to how Vance visited Hungary and campaigned on behalf of the former Hungarian dictator just days before he lost his reelection bid in a landslide.

Yesterday, Buttigieg slammed Vance for claiming he opposes fraud. Buttigieg shared a clip of Vance giving a speech in Kansas City, where the vice president said, “If you are committing fraud against the American people, you ought to go to prison.”

“You could start by walking down the hall,” Buttigieg clapped back. “See why your boss keeps pardoning people convicted of money laundering, wire fraud, tax evasion, and securities fraud.”

Earlier this year, Buttigieg mocked Vance’s battle with the pope. In April, Pope Leo XIV said that Jesus “is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

Vance took issue with that statement, even though Pope Leo did not specifically state that he was talking about the current U.S. administration and its war against Iran. But Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, still wagged his finger at the pope and said that he should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Buttigieg, who is Episcopalian, clapped back at Vance at an appearance in Kansas, saying he couldn’t imagine a leader “telling the pope what he oughtta do on matters of faith” as the crowd laughed.

“He’s been Catholic about as long as I’ve been middle-aged, and he thinks he can lecture the pope on Catholic theology. Anyway.”

Perhaps most gratuitously, Buttigieg appeared on the Raging Moderates podcast in March, where he talked about the reported chaos in the White House.

“It’s why you’re seeing things you don’t see often, like J.D. Vance kinda shutting up right now, which is not what he usually does,” Buttigieg said.

“It’s a nice relief, though,” quipped co-host Jessica Tarlov. “I’m not mad at it.” Both she and Buttigieg laughed.

“We can be thankful to be hearing a little less from the vice president, I guess,” Buttigieg joked.

Both Buttigieg and Vance are thought to be considering runs for president in 2028, and both are appearing near the top of polls about potential 2028 contenders. That is, there’s a possibility that the two Midwesterners will face off at the top of their respective parties’ tickets.

A Public Sentiment Institute poll just released in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, found Buttigieg beating Vance in the state 43.7% to 41.7%. The poll also paired Vance with other prominent Democratic electeds like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Everyone beat Vance by several points.

The poll also asked people if they would vote for Buttigieg or Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the other top GOP contender at the moment — and Buttigieg beat him, 42.5% to 40.5%.

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Conservative Christian evangelist Franklin Graham described the United States as “morally rotten,” blaming “transgenderism” and same-sex marriage for the country’s depravity, at a predominantly Christian prayer rally on the National Mall over the weekend.

In a video message to the crowd at the May 17 event, titled “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving,” Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, decried what he called the country’s “downward moral decline spiraling ever deeper into the mire.”

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“Things that never would have been talked about publicly just 30 years ago, sinful behavior that should make us blush, is now celebrated and flaunted on Main Street America,” he said. “America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin; transgenderism, same-sex marriage, opening women’s locker rooms to men, are just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Our struggle today is to be free from the rule of sins that are weakening the foundations of our great republic,” he said, comparing that “struggle” to the struggle to be free from British rule in the 18^th century.

He went on to quote a Bible passage, 2 Timothy 3: 1-5, describing the “last days” in which “people will become lovers of self, lovers of money, arrogant, abusive… ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit…” — words that many say could describe the president and his MAGA loyalists.

Graham suggested that the source of America’s “moral decline” is that the Bible has been “removed” from public schools. He called on Americans to repent their “sins” and turn to Jesus Christ for “salvation.”

Graham was one of more than a dozen faith leaders to speak at Rededicate 250, which has drawn criticism for featuring a single Orthodox rabbi and two Catholic bishops in a slate of speakers dominated by evangelical Christians.

Critics have also raised questions about whether the event, part of the celebration of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, was unconstitutional and how much taxpayer money was spent on it.

As part of the president’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Congress allocated $150 million for America’s 250th birthday celebrations, CNN reports. A spokesperson for Freedom 250, a nonprofit subsidiary of the National Park Foundation that organized the event, told the outlet that Rededicate 250 was funded by a mix of private donations and public dollars, but they did not specify how much taxpayer money went toward the rally.

Meanwhile, Andrew Koppelman, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, described the event as “contrary to the fundamental purposes of the Constitution.”

“This kind of divisive embrace of a particular religion and trying to associate the incumbent administration with that religion is bad for religion, bad for government and bad for America,” he told CNN.

Douglas Laycock, a specialist in religion and law at the University of Texas School of Law, told the outlet that Rededicate 250 was “flagrantly unconstitutional” because “it is explicit government promotion of religion, and not just religion in general, but of a fairly specific version of one particular religion.”

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A trans high school track and field star was forced to share three first-place victories with cisgender opponents who finished far behind her at a competition on Saturday due to a new California policy requiring cis girls to be scored separately from trans girls.

The trans winner, AB Hernandez, became the target of nationwide hate and harassment last year when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the multi-sport athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil.” Swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at competitions. The late Charlie Kirk pushed Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to condemn her. The U.S. president threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.

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The president called her participation in the 2025 state track-and-field championships “not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls.” He also threatened to permanently end federal funding to the state and asked local cops to stop her from competing. They didn’t, and she ended up winning first place in two competitions.

After his rampage, California quickly caved to the president and, last May, instituted a partial ban on trans girls in school sports. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the governing body overseeing the state’s high school sports programs, announced a pilot program that would allow “any biological female” student athlete who “would have” qualified for finals — if Hernandez hadn’t beat them — to compete in the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships.

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The result: Hernandez now gets scored separately from cis girls and cis boys, essentially competing alone in a separate category created only for trans girls.

In Saturday’s competition – the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section finals in Division 3 – Hernandez reportedly dominated in the high jump, long jump, and triple jump categories. But as Advocate reported, three cisgender girls were also given first-place spots despite finishing far behind their transgender opponent. All of these first-place victors will now move on to the CIF preliminaries next week.

“It feels like it takes it away,” Hernandez told a reporter after the competition. “It just feels like it’s not real. I’m just there to participate, basically. It’s a little bit of a struggle to get it out of my mind.”

While there were reportedly no protests at Saturday’s competition, the anti-trans group Save Girls’ Sports did demonstrate at the track-and-field preliminary meet at Yorba Linda High School earlier this month. Apparently, the program allowing cis girls to be scored separately is not enough for them.

Hernandez‘s mother, Nereyda, told the Los Angeles Times that she warned her daughter the anti-trans machine would “hit us hard” because it’s an election year. “They’re using us for their campaigns,” she said.

But she said she and her daughter aren’t backing down. “It’s just the outsiders. They’re infiltrating, pretending they’re parents or they know people, but I’m the mom. I know who they are.”

Throughout the many controversies surrounding Hernandez, including several schools refusing to compete against her volleyball team, the teenager has remained steadfast in her commitment to playing the sports she loves.

 “I can tune it out pretty well,” she told The Guardian last June. “I don’t really care. It’s weird when reporters come, and I’m like, I forgot I’m famous now. But for the most part, I’m living a normal life, and then I go on social media and, I’m like, wait, I’m known.”

Hernandez said of the president and his transphobic right-wing supporters who have repeatedly targeted her and other trans athletes, “They try to use intimidation tactics to push people to quit, but I’m not scared of them. They bark, but we bite.”

“I don’t think they realized who they messed with,” she added. “People say, ‘Ooh, they messed with the wrong kid.’ But at the same time, they messed with the right one. Because I’m not keeping my mouth shut.”

Nereyda also spoke to the publication, admitting that she previously supported the president (though she now calls herself nonpartisan). “I wanted to put that out there so people know it doesn’t matter what your political views are,” she said. “You can still be accepting and supportive of your family member.”

Nereyda has remained a fierce advocate for her daughter. In August 2025, she blasted Riverside Unified School District board member Amanda Vickers for speaking to Fox News about the controversy. 

“You actually entertained and welcomed harassment to my child,” she said.

“You are a board member. You have an oath to protect, to support all children, not just the ones that fit your ideas, your beliefs. My daughter is not the problem. The problem is coordinated external efforts often led by individuals [who] travel from district to district… to spread fear and put parents against each other, using religion as a shield for discrimination.”

“This has nothing to do with fairness in sport and everything to do with erasing transgender children,” she said.

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It’ll soon be Pride Month, and we’re celebrating on LGBTQ Nation by sharing your Pride photos and stories.

Pride in Pictures is our annual series where we highlight our readers’ stories about their experiences at Pride. If you have a picture at Pride, send it to us and tell the story that goes with it.

Pride is an important time of year, and it’s even more important now that it’s under attack. We want to bring attention to your Pride stories by featuring your pictures on this website.

How it works

Sharing your story and photo is simple! All you need to do is fill out the form below.

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Submit a picture from a previous year’s Pride celebration along with a brief explanation of why it’s significant to you.

All summer long, we’ll highlight our favorite photos and stories in an article on the site and share it with our newsletter subscribers and social media followers

What types of photos qualify?

Your picture could be of you or someone else participating in Pride festivities, or even a snapshot taken from the sidelines.

You could be dancing and singing at the top of your lungs or standing in solidarity with the people you love. You could be covered in glitter or draped in Pride flags.

The only requirement is that your photo captures the essence of Pride and what it means to you.

Let’s make this Pride month one to remember

By sharing our stories and photos, we have the power to lift up the different voices and experiences that make our LGBTQ+ community so special.

So share those fabulous outfits, powerful protest signs, doting parents, and those proud, rainbow-streaked faces. Show us the parade floats, loving couples, and eager activists. But most importantly, tell us the story behind it.

Pride is not just a time for celebration, but also an opportunity to show the world our strength and diversity as a community.

Let’s showcase the beauty and significance of Pride through #PrideInPictures.

Submit your photo to Pride in Pictures

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When I first met Ben Baader more than a decade ago, I was doing interviews for a PhD dissertation on the lives of transgender Jews with an Orthodox background.

Orthodox Jewish life is deeply gendered. Men and women sit separately in synagogue. Some public prayers require a quorum of 10 men. Certain ritual honors, including being called to read from the Torah, have traditionally excluded women. For many trans people, such a world would feel alienating, but Baader’s story did not fit the usual script.

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Born in Germany in 1959, Baader is an associate professor of European history and Jewish Studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He lives publicly as a man and uses he/him pronouns, but thinks of his gender identity as more complex than strictly male.

Back in 2015, when I interviewed him for my doctoral dissertation, Baader had found a very particular arrangement in his local Orthodox synagogue. 

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Jewish law, with its centuries of rabbinical rulings on almost every aspect of observant life, also has a tradition of thinking through unusual cases and allowing more than one valid path to an answer. That richness made it possible for Baader’s situation to be treated not as an impossibility, but as a question to be considered. 

After consultation, his rabbi decided that he could sit on the men’s side and be called to the Torah. But because Jewish law had not clearly ruled on his gender, he would not be counted among the 10 men required for a prayer quorum, called minyan. For some trans men, that would have been painful, proof that recognition remained partial and conditional. For Baader, it became something else.

“I love not being counted when women are not being counted,” he told me at the time. “There is a piece of humility. It keeps me from taking on the hubris of the male space, the male superiority business.”

On the other hand, thanks to the subtleties of Jewish law and its different levels of stringency, Baader can be counted in the quorum of three men needed for the introduction of the prayer after meals.

“I am counted here, and I am not counted there, I love this!” Baader explained with delight.

Baader was not asking Orthodoxy to make him simply male. He was making a home in the cracks of a system that had not ruled about his gender. In those cracks, he found meaning. 

More than a decade later, we spoke again, and much had changed. Baader is older now, and his health has become the main constraint on his religious practice. In 2018, he suffered a bleeding ulcer and massive blood loss. He says he “almost died” and never fully recovered. Years later, after seeing many specialists, he was diagnosed with a form of chronic fatigue. At one point, he could barely walk a block. Earlier this year, after a cardiac episode, he received a pacemaker.

For years, he could not make it to synagogue. Even now, going requires planning. Last summer, when he was strong enough, he would arrive early, rest before services, take breaks, avoid socializing, then sleep in a nearby park before making the trip home.

The rabbi who first accepted him is gone. When the new rabbi arrived, Baader worried that the old agreement might not survive the change, but it did. The new rabbi allowed him to continue attending services on the men’s side, while the restrictions stayed in place. He was allowed to remain in that unusual space he had come to cherish.

“In terms of trans, nothing has changed,” he says. “The big issue is not my gender but my politics.”

By politics, Baader means Israel and Gaza. In October 2023, he was deeply shaken by Hamas’s massacre. At the same time, he has also been more than pained by the devastation the Israeli army has inflicted on Gaza. As a scholar of German and Jewish history, he became involved in a controversy at his university after, in the fall of 2023, a nursing student was suspended over social media posts about Gaza, including one comparing an Israeli soldier to a Nazi soldier.

Baader did not endorse the comparison, but he argued publicly that calling it antisemitic was controversial, and that universities must remain places where hard, painful, even offensive political speech can be discussed.

“I was deliberate,” he says, “to only hold that these things need to be discussed.”

The intervention mattered and created a precedent at the university. Baader helped advocate for the student at a university hearing, and she was reinstated. “Once in a while, you can make a real difference,” he says. “That was such a moment.”

But that moment followed him back to the synagogue. A member of the congregation later asked to meet him for coffee. In the conversation, the man reached out with genuine kindness and curiosity, Baader says, and poignantly, he reported that people at the synagogue were hurt. They felt Baader was “siding with the enemy in a time of need.” Previously, the rabbi had also emailed him, saying how hurtful Baader’s actions felt while his own sons were fighting in Gaza.

For years, Baader’s gender had been the delicate question in the room. Now, the greater tension was his politics.

“Some people are happy and friendly and delighted to see me,” he says. “Others really stopped acknowledging me and are close to hostile. And my sense is that it’s more for the politics than the trans stuff.”

This reversal says something about the strange and often contradictory nature of belonging. A trans, nonbinary Jew can sometimes be accommodated inside an Orthodox synagogue more easily than a Jew who refuses to look away from the genocide allegations against Israel now before the International Court of Justice.

Baader cares sincerely about Israel and feels the pain of October 7. He calls the attack “a terrible massacre.” But he also rejects the idea that history began that day, or that explaining a history of violence is the same thing as justifying it.

Throughout his life, Baader has been used to being an outlier. He is a German Jewish trans scholar, the child of a Holocaust survivor and a non-Jewish mother. He is also a man who lives as male but does not entirely identify as such, an observant Jew whose synagogue nourishes him spiritually but often alienates him politically.

He has also watched as many younger genderqueer people he knows have moved toward more binary transitions. He respects them, but he remains attached to his own in-between place.

“I’m fully settled in this gender indeterminacy,” he says, “in that space of complexity that’s deeply meaningful to me and deeply beautiful.”

That beauty has shaped his religious life. When we met, Baader told me he understood why trans advocates in the Orthodox world often framed the lives of transgender Jews as deserving compassion. The appeal, he recognized, was both strategic and, in many cases, sincere. 

He felt, however, that transgender Jews should not be seen only as people for whom fellow Orthodox Jews ought to feel empathy, but also as people from whom they might learn. Baader believes that living between settled categories can create a different awareness of God. Being transgender is yet another way of looking at the human experience, and one that may also teach us something about the divine.

When I first wrote about Baader in 2017, what struck me most was that Orthodox Judaism — so often imagined from the outside as rigid, conservative, and binary — had found room for him in all his fluidity. What made this possible was not a break with tradition, but tradition itself: a centuries-old rabbinic culture of argument, interpretation, and competing views, quite unlike the centralized religious authority of Catholicism. Jewish law did not say, simply, “You are male” or “You are female.” It said, in effect, “Here, you are treated as male; there, you are not.” Most people would experience that as a contradiction. For Baader, it was a spiritual opening.

Now, the same capacity to live with contradiction helps him remain in a synagogue where many people do not share his politics.

“I’m able to live with contradictions,” he says. “I can live with things that others feel are mutually exclusive. And that is true for my gender, and that is true for being in deep spiritual communion with people whose politics are at odds with mine.”

That does not mean he is immune to hurt. When prayer directly follows a sermon he disagrees with, he can find it hard to let go and to entirely sink into the liturgy. Political hostility still stings. The coming arrival of another new rabbi makes him nervous. He now needs, as he puts it, three kinds of accommodations: for his health, for his transness, and for his politics.

“It’s getting complicated,” he says, but he has no plans of going anywhere else. There are other Jewish groups in Winnipeg, including a small prayer gathering for people who cannot bear the politics of the mainstream synagogues. Baader values it, but he misses sharing ritual with fellow observant Jews.

The Orthodox synagogue, for all its limitations, still gives him something he cannot easily replace. Paraphrasing the rabbi and renowned Talmud scholar David Weiss Halivni, Baader says, “The people I pray with I cannot talk to, and the people I talk to I cannot pray with.”

For many LGBTQ+ people, leaving religion is the only way to survive. For others, staying requires a kind of shrinking, a bargain with silence. Baader’s path has been different. He has neither fully left nor fully belonged. Instead, he has made a life in the fractures.

“My only full belonging,” he says, searching for words, “is in this grace I’ve received to be open to the flow of Light.” This is the phrase Baader uses to describe his experience of the divine.

Baader’s story does not offer a neat lesson about inclusion. It offers something messier but also hopeful in its own way. At a time of increased polarization, religion has given Baader a community where people can pray side by side even while disagreeing on some fundamental questions. It is not seamless belonging, but seamlessness was never the point. As singer and poet Leonard Cohen put it, “there is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.”

For context, Orthodox Judaism is often more visibly traditional than other Jewish denominations, such as Reform or Conservative Judaism. In Orthodox communities, daily life is shaped by religious law, including Sabbath observance, kosher dietary laws, regular prayer, modest dress, and clear expectations regarding family and gender roles. Orthodox Jews also wear distinctive clothing, such as black hats, yarmulkes, ritual fringes, wigs, or long skirts, though customs vary widely between communities. These practices are not only personal beliefs but part of a tightly knit social and religious world, where community approval, tradition, and belonging can carry great weight.

An estimated 1% of Orthodox Jews in the U.S.identify as LGBTQ+. Some feel forced to choose between their Jewish and queer identities, or seek out support to avoid mental and emotional stress. Meanwhile, groups like Eshel work to build LGBTQ+-inclusive Orthodox Jewish communities, with chapters in the U.S., Canada, and Israel, as well as virtual online groups.

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A video is circulating of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate asking attendees at his town halls to sing “America the Beautiful” together before any political arguing begins – something he reportedly does before every town hall he hosts.

“I want to do something to prove that Democrats, independents, and Republicans can work together to make something wonderful,” Rob Sand, the current Iowa Auditor of State who is running for governor, tells a crowd in the video. He then asks everyone at the town hall to sing the first verse of the long-beloved patriotic anthem.

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The people listen, and all sing together in a powerful moment of unity.

“This is beautiful, actually,” wrote trans activist Charlotte Clymer, “and some on the far-left who don’t understand why this appeals to so many of us is probably a great place to start in unpacking why they seem incapable of connecting with voters outside of their ideological camp.”

Reporter Kevin Driscoll commented, “It’s hard to believe this is real when you first watch it.”

While some said the moment was too corny, many others also praised Sand for trying to bring people together.

A gay-owned floral design shop in San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ Castro district was targeted with horrific graffiti on Saturday that used Nazi rhetoric to call for gay people to be murdered.

Jeff Dumlao and partner Roberto Cancel rushed back to their shop shortly after closing at 5 p.m. after receiving a text from a client alerting them to the graffiti. When they arrived, the police were already there, gathered around a large message on the outside wall that read, “Fa**ots = Gas Chambers.”

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The pair not only discovered the disturbing message but also learned the suspect had assaulted an upstairs neighbor – punching him in the face when he told him to stop spraying the walls – before fleeing in a white SUV, SFist reported.

The assault victim did manage to take a photo of the SUV and license plate as the suspect drove away. Painted in large red, white, and blue letters on the rear windshield was an ode to the late anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September at a public speaking event. “Onward Christian Soldiers. Charlie Kirk Rest in Power,” the windshield declared.

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Kirk was a prominent right-wing activist and podcaster known for his extreme statements, like, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” and that being gay is an “error” that needs to be “correct[ed].” He was vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ and was particularly outspoken against trans rights, once calling trans people a “throbbing middle finger to God.”

Police are reportedly close to making an arrest.

In a statement to SFist, Castro Merchants president Nate Bourg lamented the “deliberate hate crime targeting a gay-owned business and the values of safety, pride, and inclusion that define the Castro.”

“Our community has fought too hard for visibility, dignity, and security to be pushed backward by violence or intimidation,” Bourg said. “We stand united, and we will fiercely defend our businesses, our neighbors, and the community we have built together.”

Dumlao and Cancel quickly covered the graffiti, but they are now working with an artist to create a flower mural on the same wall.

“I want to commemorate this with an image of beauty,” Dumalo said, “and of love.”

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CNN host Anderson Cooper was distraught over the idea that a convicted child sex abuser could get money from Donald Trump that he had promised to use to buy his victims’ silence.

Cooper was reporting on the case of Andrew Paul Johnson, who was arrested for rioting at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was a massive attempt to violently overturn the results of the 2020 elections and extend Trump’s first term as president.

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Trump pardoned Johnson last year, and he was arrested just months later on child sex abuse charges. He was found guilty by a jury earlier this year and sentenced to life in prison. But one detail stood out to Cooper: Johnson tried to pay off one of his victims to the tune of $10 million, which he told the victim at the time he would be getting as “restitution” for his January 6 arrest.

“He said not to tell anybody,” one of Johnson’s victims testified. The two victims were 12 at the time.

Now, Trump has struck a deal with the Department of Justice – headed by his former personal criminal attorney – to create a $1.776 billion fund to pay money to people he claims were wrongfully prosecuted during Joe Biden’s tenure in office.

And Cooper pointed out that Johnson might be eligible for funds because of his January 6 conviction.

“But you know what? He actually might have been right,” Cooper said, his voice cracking while delivering the unbelievable claim. “He actually might get that money if he applies for it. What’s to stop it?”

“Could President Trump receive money from the fund? That’s another question.”

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Two events over the last weekend highlight the deep-rooted problems that the country faces in the Trump presidency. The first was Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) losing his primary battle, and the other was the Reclaim 250 rally in D.C. The events seem unrelated at first glance, but they show just how deeply entwined Christian nationalism, the Trump presidency, and the Republican Party are.

No one should shed tears for Cassidy’s loss. He had one moment of doing the right thing, followed by years of repenting for it. Cassidy was one of seven GOP senators who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection. Trump hated Cassidy for that move, even though Cassidy did everything to suck up to Trump afterward.

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Notably, Cassidy is the man who unleashed RFK Jr. against the nation’s health. As a medical doctor, Cassidy knew that Kennedy was a crank, but Kennedy was Trump‘s choice. Cassidy earned a gold in mental gymnastics to justify providing the crucial vote that allowed Kennedy to take over the Department of Health and Human Services and thereby do incalculable damage to public health.

Cassidy’s attempt to make Trump forget about the impeachment vote didn’t work. Trump endorsed Rep. Julie Letlow (R-LA) in the GOP primary. Cassidy finished a humiliating third. “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump gloated after Cassidy’s loss.

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From a policy perspective, there’s probably not a lot of difference between Cassidy and Letlow. In Congress, Letlow sponsored the anti-LGBTQ+ “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would have restricted materials available in school libraries and outed trans students to their parents.

But from a political perspective, Cassidy’s loss made it clear that Republicans will do whatever Trump tells them to do. Trump is on a retribution tour in his own party, which has been largely successful. The message to Republican politicians is clear: crossing Trump means the end of your career. Only completely loyal sycophants stand a chance of election.

So Trump controls the GOP. That’s the easy takeaway. The more complicated one is about who is controlling Trump.

The answer was on display on the National Mall last Sunday. Rededicate 250 was a political rally dressed up as a prayer meeting. It was funded by your tax dollars and corporate sponsors, including United Airlines and MasterCard. The event is part of the 250th celebration of the nation’s founding and a slap in the face to the Founders’ belief in the principle of separation of church and state.

The speakers included a who’s who of the religious right who have made attacking LGBTQ+ rights their life’s work. Franklin Graham complained that “America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin,” adding that “transgenderism, same-sex marriage, opening women’s locker rooms to men are just the tip of the iceberg.”

The speakers made no effort to hide the fact that they were promoting Christian nationalism. Robert Jeffress, a powerful Texas pastor who has said that homosexuality is a “perversion,” told the gathering that the Founders were Christian nationalists.

“These leaders who loved our country and loved our God would be called Christian nationalists today, and it is a title they would have gladly embraced,” Jeffress said. “By the way, if being a Christian nationalist means loving Jesus Christ and loving America, count me in.”

The rally just showed that its leaders define Christianity as a specifically conservative faith. Sure, there was a token rabbi there, and even Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whom Pope Leo XIV has since replaced with someone who seems a lot less likely to compare Charlie Kirk to St. Paul. But the fact of the matter is that the rally’s foundation rests on the views of the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic movement with a radical vision for the nation’s future. In that universe, politics and religion are the same. You can’t be a Christian and not be a Trumper.

Trump has long let conservative evangelicals have their way. But as time goes on, it’s clear that Trump is letting them call the shots.

There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, Trump doesn’t really care about most of the religious right’s issues. It costs him nothing to let them attack trans people as long as Trump can keep doing whatever he wants to do. His administration is loaded with Christian nationalists like Project 2025 author Russell Vought and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as dozens of others who fill less visible positions.

As Trump‘s popularity plummets to new lows, Christians remain the only group (by religious affiliation), a majority of whom still think Trump is doing a good job. That only reinforces Trump‘s need to placate them and reward them for their loyalty.

Yet Trump is increasingly showing the signs of declining health and advancing age. He’s still the Commander-in-Chief, but a dozing one. He is politically far weaker than he used to be. Other groups have more leeway to operate around him, especially conservative Christians, who are over-represented in the administration.

The test case is already unfolding: Louisiana is suing the FDA to prevent women from getting mifepristone, a drug to terminate pregnancy, via out-of-state prescriptions. The case is now before the Supreme Court, which has temporarily stayed a lower court order banning mail orders for the drug. That order would have effectively ended mail-order prescriptions, which now account for two-thirds of abortions, nationwide.

But the Trump administration has not taken a side in the case, which is very unusual. The political fallout in siding with the ban would be tremendous, especially in a year when the GOP is already dreading the midterms.

Anti-abortion conservatives don’t care. They want Trump to deliver, and they are angry that he is waffling. “They don’t want this going into the midterm election? Well, unfortunately, they just got it,” Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council, told The New York Times.

Trump is beholden to the one group that is still standing behind him. Everyone is already angry at him. Why would he add his closest allies to the list? The easiest route for him would be to side with the anti-abortion groups.

Whether he does or not, the fact remains that Trump didn’t set the agenda. The Christian nationalists did, and he’s having to react to it. There are already other efforts, such as the campaign to end marriage equality.

Trump only cares about what people owe him. Now he’s finding out the hard way just how he owes to the conservative evangelicals that are his base. He doesn’t control the movement that he unleashed. Instead, it’s coming to control him.

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