At the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions’s abortion pills hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri spent the whole of his allotted time reiterating disinformation about transgender people. And, this isn’t the first time he’s utilized a hearing about reproductive healthcare to do so.  During an interaction at the hearing, Sen. Hawley asked Dr. Nisha Verma, who provides reproductive care in Georgia and Massachusetts, “Can men get pregnant?” Hawley asked this question over 10 times, repeatedly cutting her off when she attempted to answer.  Verma, along with Dr. Monique Wubbenhorst and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, was called on by the committee for the hearing. Wubbenhorst previously testified in support of anti-abortion initiatives, and AG Murrill just indicted a California abortion provider on felony charges, accusing him of sending abortion pills into her state.  Before Hawley had the chance to share his views on gender, Florida Sen. Ashley Moody kicked off the topic by asking, “Miss Verma, can men get pregnant?” “Dr. Verma,” she corrected. Moody repeated:“Dr. Verma, can men get pregnant?” Verma paused. Moody asked the other witnesses, who quickly replied “no.” Later in the hearing, before handing off the mic to Sen. Hawley, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the committee, said, “I think it’s science-based, by the way, that men can’t have babies.” Then, it was Hawley’s turn.  “Since you bring it up, why don’t we start there,” he began. “Dr. Verma, I wasn’t sure I understood your answer to Sen. Moody a moment ago. Do you think that men can get pregnant?”  “I hesitated there because I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was,” Dr. Verma responded, adding, “I mean I do take care of patients with different identities, I take care of many women, I take care of people with different identities.” “Well,” Hawley returned, “the goal is the truth, so can men get pregnant?” “Again,” Dr. Verma said, “the reason I pause there is I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is—” Hawley cut her off, in part saying, “the goal is just to establish a biological reality.”  “I take care of people with many identities—” Dr. Verma began, before being cut off by Hawley.  “Can men get pregnant?” “I take care of many women, I do take care of people that don’t identify as women—” “Can men get pregnant?” “Again, as I’m saying—” Hawley cut in. This tempo continued, with the senator at one point saying that he was “trying to test, frankly,” Dr. Verma’s “veracity as a medical professional and as a scientist” and “I thought we were passed all of this, frankly.” > Sen. Josh @HawleyMO: "Can men get pregnant?" > > Dr. Nisha Verma: "I'm not really sure what the goal of the question is." > > Hawley: "The goal is just to establish a biological reality…Can men get > pregnant?" pic.twitter.com/4egtfZrPgB > > — CSPAN (@cspan) January 14, 2026 Transgender men can and do get pregnant, as detailed in several different reports currently posted on The National Library of Medicine, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services. Scientific research on this community is still limited, in part due to transgender men being hesitant to seek medical care in hospitals. Research out of Rutgers University found that about 44 percent of pregnant transgender men seek medical care outside of traditional care with an obstetrician, like with a nurse-midwife.  During the hearing, Republican members described abortion medication as dangerous and in need of further restriction. Their Democrat colleagues said that the hearing, entitled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs,” was a way to discredit settled science.  Mifepristone, one of the pills used in abortions with medication, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for over 25 years and, just this past October, the FDA approved another generic version of the pill. A New York Times review of more than 100 studies on abortion medication found that it is safe and effective. The current pushback against abortion medication, which accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the US in 2023, is being spearheaded in part by Erin Hawley—the senator from Missouri’s wife. Erin Hawley works for the Alliance Defending Freedom and, in 2024, unsuccessfully argued for further restrictions on abortion medication in front of the Supreme Court. In December, the couple launched “The Love Life Initiative,” which aims to support anti-abortion ballot initiatives.  Back in 2022, at a different hearing on abortion access, Sen. Hawley focused on the same topic with another witness: law professor Khiara Bridges. Hawley began, as he did on Wednesday, by saying he “wants to understand.” “You’ve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be women?” Hawley said. Bridges responded, explaining that some cis women can get pregnant while others can’t—and that people who don’t identify as women get pregnant, too. “So,” the senator returned, “this isn’t really a women’s rights issue.”  Bridges replied, smiling: “we can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.” 

Tributes poured in on Sunday following the news of the death of director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, film producer and photographer Michele Reiner. If you take a look at them, you’ll notice that many go beyond his film work and speak glowingly about his progressive activism—except for one missive from President Donald Trump. The president lashed out earlier today, claiming the filmmaker had “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” and hated that his administration “surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.” > Remember when they tried to make criticizing Charlie Kirk after his murder > into a capital offense?(Yes, this is real.) > > — Joel S. (@joelhs.bsky.social) 2025-12-15T14:59:18.290Z Reiner was a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), a nonprofit organization established to sponsor a federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Proposition 8 in 2009.  The ballot proposition banned same-sex marriage and added language to the California Constitution, stating “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”  Religious organizations, including the Catholic Bishops of California and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, advocated for the proposition through in-person canvassing and millions of dollars in donations.  A report from The Hollywood Reporter stated that Reiner collaborated with political strategists to establish AFER and leveraged his entertainment industry connections to secure $3-5 million in financial backing from wealthy film producers to support its legal work. AFER supported two couples—Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo—and argued that Prop 8 discriminated on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Prop 8 in 2010, citing that it violated both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.   The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court due to appeals. The court decided in 2013 that the Prop 8 sponsors did not have legal standing to dispute the ruling because they could not demonstrate a “personal and tangible harm” that went beyond a “generalized grievance.” Prop 8 wasn’t just a one-off in Reiner’s progressive activism. In 1998, he led the campaign to pass Proposition 10 in California. It passed that November, authorizing a $0.50 tax on cigarettes and up to $1 on other tobacco products, such as cigars. The money generated went to First 5 California, which distributes funds to the state’s county branches in support of programs for young children, such as health care and school readiness. “I loved Rob,” Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar for her starring role in Reiner’s film, “Misery,” said in a statement to Deadline. “He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist.” Despite these progressive policy wins for Reiner, he was still compassionate enough to mourn people whose politics he despised. After Charlie Kirk was murdered in September, Reiner appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “That should never happen to anybody,” he said of Kirk’s violent and public assassination. “I don’t care what your political beliefs…that’s not a solution to solving problems.” > Rob Reiner responded with grace and compassion to Charlie's assassination. > This video makes it all the more painful to hear of he and his wife's tragic > end. May God be close to the broken hearted in this terrible story. > pic.twitter.com/07g2EFu8Ha > > — Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) December 15, 2025 As of this writing, Reiner’s murder is still being investigated by Los Angeles police and Hollywood is left to mourn one of its most visionary activists.

On Sunday, US lawmakers released the annual defense policy bill authorizing a record $901 billion in national defense spending in 2026. The bill was somehow $8 billion more than President Trump requested, and bans transgender women from competing in sports at military universities.  The 3,086-page bill states that the Secretary of Defense will ensure military academies do not permit a person “whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.” The text codifies “sex” as “a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” The bill has already been negotiated between Republicans and Democrats and is set to go to a House vote this week, likely leaving little room for significant changes. But the new version does drop the ban on Defense Department funding on gender-affirming surgeries. Previous versions passed by both the House and the Senate incorporated the ban. The House bill approved in September also prohibited gender transition services for family members through the Exceptional Family Member Program: “No gender transition procedures, including surgery or medication, may be provided to a minor dependent child through an EFMP.”   Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act restricted TRICARE, the health care program that provides civilian health benefits for US military personnel, their dependents, and retirees, from covering “certain medical procedures for children that could result in sterilization.”  The NDAA is must-pass legislation as it sets the defense budget and determines the policies it will apply to each year. NDAA laws from previous fiscal years thus have a knock-on effect, opening the door for lawmakers to flood the new bill with anti-trans provisions that would likely not pass on their own and force Democrats to block them while on limited time.  The House bill that was passed in September contains several anti-LGBT amendments in addition to the ban on “gender transition procedures” for servicemembers’ children. Many of Rep. Nancy Mace‘s (R-SC) proposed additions were adopted—including prohibiting coverage for “gender-related medical treatment,” defined to include puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries, as well as mental health care for transgender young people and requiring the use of single-sex facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms according to their “reproductive system.” Every year’s NDAA will likely prompt discussions on what anti-transgender provisions could be forced through. As my colleagues Madison Pauly and Henry Carnell wrote in January, President Donald Trump is restricting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth. This has led institutions like the NCAA and government departments such as the Department of Veterans Affairs to bow to his orders. The NDAA is just one piece of this coordinated effort. 

When President Donald Trump tries to defend his mass deportation agenda, he claims, without evidence, that immigrants are entering the United States from “mental institutions and insane asylums.”  When he wants to insult people—like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Mo.), or former Vice President Kamala Harris—he calls them “low IQ,” “deranged,” and “mentally disabled.”  And when he and Vice President JD Vance tried to justify the federal takeover of Washington, DC, they claimed it was necessary in order to get mentally ill people off the streets. “Why have we convinced ourselves that it’s compassionate to allow a person who’s obviously a schizophrenic, or suffering from some other mental illness, why is it compassionate to let that person fester in the streets?” Vance said—offering as evidence, CNN reported, an anecdote “about his family being yelled at during a trip to DC.” > Thousands of federal staffers working on mental health-related issues have > been purged by Trump’s government. This is what mental health and disability advocates people call “sanist” language—words used to stigmatize mental health conditions in a derogatory way. Trump routinely turns to it to degrade his enemies and justify his actions. A review of his speeches and interviews includes more than 200 uses of the word ‘crazy’ thus far in his second term, and ‘lunatic’ and ‘insane’ more than 60 times each, according to a Roll Call database. While these words can be part of casual vernacular, Trump’s constant use of dismissive and stigmatizing rhetoric matches his actions. His officials have dismantled key parts of the federal workforce dedicated to treatment and prevention and cancelled millions of dollars in research grants focused on mental health. In doing so, experts say, Trump and his cronies are not only undermining support systems for people with mental illness but also worsening some of the same issues they claim to prioritize, including minimizing crime and reducing homelessness.  “When you cut those services, you have a lot of downstream impacts, and that’s going to include upticks in emergency department visits, hospitalization needs, incarceration and in homelessness,” said Hannah Wesolowski, the chief advocacy officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. One of Trump’s most sweeping attacks on people with mental illness came in late July, when he signed an executive order pushing “long-term” involuntary institutionalization for people with mental illnesses experiencing homelessness, which the order argues the EO argues will “restore public order.” Trump was more blunt about his hopes for what the EO would actually do a few weeks later, when he announced the deployment of National Guard troops to DC: “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR,” he posted on Truth Social. The White House did not respond to a series of questions. Advocacy groups quickly pointed to a plethora of issues in Trump’s order, including that it criminalizes mental illness and tramples the civil rights of unhoused people, particularly those with mental health disabilities. “This executive order diverts resources away from the real solutions we know work and instead embraces coercion over care,” National Disability Rights Network executive director Marlene Sallo said in a press release. As the National Alliance to End Homelessness pointed out, the order does not address who will determine involuntary civil commitment, under what criteria, nor acknowledge the shortage of mental health beds nationwide—an issue the American Psychiatric Association asked Trump to tackle at the start of his second term.  Research indicates that involuntary commitment can be highly traumatic and lead to people cycling in and out of institutions without getting the support they need. More research is needed on how best to support unhoused people with mental health disabilities and substance abuse issues, but Wesolowski, of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that Trump’s order is not the way forward. “If we want to both reduce the burden of chronic conditions in this country and reduce homelessness,” she said, “the solution to that is to help people sooner.”  Trump’s cabinet seems to share his disdain for people struggling with mental health. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy oversees the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, and the FDA, among other agencies—and since he was confirmed in February, has shuttered key offices and fired critical staffers throughout the department. As our colleague Kiera Butler previously reported, during his doomed presidential campaign, Kennedy floated sending people on antidepressants to “wellness farms…to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” He also baselessly implied, during a 2023 event with future DOGE head Elon Musk, that antidepressants could be to blame for school shootings. Just last month, the FDA held a misinformation-fest about antidepressants in pregnancy during which panelists argued that perinatal depression does not actually exist and that antidepressants are overprescribed to pregnant women, despite research suggesting that only six to ten percent take them. A leaked strategy document, that Kennedy’s so-called Make America Healthy Again Commission reportedly submitted to the president, obtained by Politico, called for a working group on antidepressant “overprescription trends” among kids.  HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump at a White House health technology event, July 30, 2025.Jack Power/White House/Zuma Federal staffers working on mental health-related issues, meanwhile, have been purged by Trump’s government. NIH has lost 7,000 workers, roughly 16 percent of its workforce, through firings and resignations, according to a ProPublica analysis. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) lost an even higher proportion, at 22 percent. HHS also plans to cut more than $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which will be collapsed into a proposed “Administration for a Healthy America,” following cuts of $72 million from March’s continuing appropriations bill; dwarfing an additional $19 million the agency supposedly plans to earmark to support housing for people with severe mental illness. In a May letter to Kennedy, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and three Democratic senators said the plans to dissolve SAMHSA appear to violate the federal law that created it. A slew of advocacy organizations also condemned the proposed cuts, calling to preserve the agency and its funding. NIMH will also be swallowed up into the newly proposed National Institute of Behavioral Health, along with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. An HHS spokesperson told Mother Jones that “Secretary Kennedy remains deeply committed to the mental health of all Americans, including our nation’s children” and that “under the Secretary’s leadership, SAMHSA is sustaining and strengthening essential mental health and substance use programs so people can access timely, high-quality care.” Many NIMH research projects have also been decimated. In March, Michael Bronstein, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN), received news that he was dreading: He and his colleagues were losing what was left of their four-year, $187,000 research grant from the NIMH to study vaccine hesitancy in people with severe mental illness. (Bronstein spoke to Mother Jones in his personal capacity.)  The work was important. Research has shown that people with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are vaccinated at lower rates. They are also more likely to die of illnesses for which we have vaccines. But under the leadership of RFK Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, the NIH deprioritized research on vaccine hesitancy, according to the grant termination notice Bronstein received—and a Washington Post report published the same day.  The news was particularly cruel for Bronstein, who with his colleagues had already spent time recruiting about 60 participants who were prepared to open up to researchers about their mental health conditions. “When things get cancelled like this,” Bronstein said, “it’s a betrayal of those individuals’ trust”—and of research that he believed was “going to have a real impact on public health.” Past NIMH research has, indeed, had major implications for treating mental illness. One 2008 study, for example, investigated treatments for psychosis in young people experiencing an initial schizophrenic episode, and led to the launch of hundreds of treatment programs for schizophrenia nationwide. The research found that wraparound treatment of psychosis after an initial episode led to less severe episodes later in life. That study was “a great example of research being put into practice and making a huge impact,” Wesolowski said. “But we need more of that.” But mental health research has been a particular focus on the chopping block of DOGE, which terminated hundreds of NIH grants—with NIMH grants accounting for the largest subset, according to a paper published in JAMA in May. Since then, dozens more NIMH grants have been cancelled, although some terminations have been reversed or are likely to be reversed following a slate of legal challenges, according to the database Grant Witness.   The majority of the cancelled NIMH grants featured in the JAMA study—nearly 75 percent, according to Mother Jones’ analysis—focused on research involving LGBTQ people, who are more than twice as likely as straight, cisgender people to report mental disorders. And with the Trump administration’s additional measures seeking to erase LGBTQ people from public life—by banning trans troops from the military, dismissing discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and purging LGBTQ history from public spaces—these rates could climb even higher.  > “When things get cancelled like this, it’s a betrayal of those individuals’ > trust.” Many of the NIMH-funded projects specifically aimed to better understand these disparities. One cancelled grant, for example, was intended to study how stigma, including state laws restricting trans health care, shapes the mental health of trans people living in rural areas. The project, part of Kirsten F. Siebach’s doctoral research at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, will continue thanks to an alternative funding source. (Siebach also spoke to Mother Jones in their personal capacity, not on behalf of the university.)  But Siebach, who hopes to build their career as a public health researcher focusing on how structural stigma affects LGBTQ people, worries that “there’s just no funding to support such work” going forward. There is already evidence that Trump’s return to the White House has made things worse for LGBTQ kids’ mental health. The day after Trump’s re-election last November, the Trevor Project, an organization focused on preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, reported a 700 percent increase in contacts to its crisis lines. On Inauguration Day, when Trump signed an executive order that essentially refused to acknowledge the existence of trans people—the organization saw a more than 30 percent increase in contacts compared to weeks prior. Casey Pick, the organization’s director of law and policy, said those spikes reflect the fact that “LGBTQ youth are well aware that the access to care, to support of adults, to welcoming and affirming schools and medical environments is very much at risk.” A protest in defense of LGBTQ suicide hotline services in New York City, July 12, 2025.Gina M Randazzo/Zuma One of the highest-profile blows for LGBTQ young people came last month, when SAMHSA officially shuttered the National Suicide Hotline’s specialized services for LGBTQ youth. Those services, received more than one million contacts since launching in 2022. In a statement, SAMHSA claimed that access to “culturally competent crisis counselors” would continue, adding, “Anyone who calls the Lifeline will continue to receive compassion and help.”  The administration has also undermined support for LGBTQ youth mental health in less public ways: Seven of the cancelled NIMH grants in the JAMA study, Mother Jones found, were explicitly focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth. (Two were since reinstated, but face cancellation again due to a recent Supreme Court ruling.) Two explicitly focused on suicide prevention among Black LGBTQ youth, who report disproportionate suicide risk; another aimed to implement and measure a pilot program for LGBTQ youth at risk of suicide in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Projects like these, Pick said, helped experts “to see trends, patterns, disparities in the mental health outcomes for our LGBTQ+ young people and to begin to identify solutions.”  Explicit attacks on LGBTQ young people in particular are coupled with indirect impacts on their mental health from other administration actions: Trump’s involuntary commitment order, for example, is likely to have a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ young people, given that they experience homelessness at higher rates than their straight and cis peers. Trump’s executive order seeking to end federal funding for K-12 schools that promote so-called “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” could penalize teachers and school counselors who seek to support LGBTQ students, which would ultimately harm the students themselves, given that research has shown accepting adults can reduce their risk of suicide. And LGBTQ youth and their families who flee their home states, or even the country, to escape threats to gender-affirming care or outright bans may further struggle after being uprooted and losing support systems. “What is so important now is that we make sure that young people know that they are not alone, that they still have access to resources,” Pick said, “but the reality is, this is a very challenging time.”

The suspect in the mass shooting responsible for killing two school-aged children and wounding 17 others at a Catholic church in Minneapolis on Wednesday has been identified as having changed her legal name in 2020 to reflect her identity as female. “Minor child identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification,” a judge wrote in court records reported by the New York Times. Predictably, voices on the far right have immediately seized on that tidbit, blaming the suspect’s gender identity for the shooting. “Today’s evil church school shooter was a trans who was likely groomed and transitioned as a teenager,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on X. “Congress MUST PASS my bill Protecting Children’s Innocence Act to make it a FELONY to perform sex change surgeries and all forms of medications on minors!!!” “One thing is VERY clear: the trans movement is radicalizing the mentally ill into becoming violent terrorists who target children for murder,” wrote conservative YouTube host Benny Johnson. “The pattern is undeniable.” Just one day after the horrific event, it isn’t yet possible to conclude why the suspected killer choose to do what she did. But what we can say is that, despite the probable identity of yesterday’s attacker, there is no evidence that transgender people are any more likely to commit mass shootings. Rather, multiple independent databases tracking mass shootings confirm the opposite: The Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in which four or more people (not including the shooter) are shot or killed estimated last year that fewer than 1 percent of the shootings it reviewed in the last decade were carried out by trans individuals. Mother Jones has its own database tracking shootings in which “three or more victims were killed in an indiscriminate public rampage.” As I wrote in 2023, very, very few of those were carried out by individuals who were not cisgender men. > One hundred and thirty four of the 141 mass shootings tracked by Mother > Jones since 1982 were carried out by men with no known history of identifying > as trans or nonbinary. Two were carried out by women believed to be cisgender. > Two more were carried out by a man and a woman, also believed to be cisgender, > working together. “From a statistical basis,” I wrote, “transgender individuals are much more prone to being the victims of violence than they are likely to commit it.” That doesn’t mean transgender people are never responsible for these acts. There are, unfortunately, many preventable deaths caused by gun violence in the US; trans people make up a very small proportion of the US population, and they make up a similarly small proportion of gun-violence perpetrators. But to blame the unnerving prevalence of mass shootings in America on the existence of trans people here isn’t just a dangerously stigmatizing, politically motivated take. It’s also bad math.

This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to its newsletter. The email came last fall while James Harter was on vacation with his husband in Quebec City, Canada. He was checking his computer in their RV when he read the no-nonsense subject line: Certificate of Pardon. He had no idea just how uncommon that email was—but in the moment, none of that mattered.  “The feelings were basically overjoyed relief,” he told The War Horse. “Just the sense of, maybe I could put what happened to me in my past.”  Nearly 40 years ago, Harter was court-martialed for having consensual sex with another man in his unit. He was convicted under the former Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 125, which forbade sodomy, defined as “unnatural carnal copulation,” and sentenced to a bad conduct discharge from the Army plus six months in two military correctional facilities: one in Germany and one in Kansas. He spent most of his time in isolation, on suicide watch.  “I just couldn’t understand how I’d gotten to this point,” he said, “where I was in prison with murderers because I had sex with someone.”  Last year, however, he finally got a chance at redemption when then-President Joe Biden issued a proclamation to grant a full and unconditional pardon to veterans with court-martial convictions under former Article 125. Harter applied right away.  Receiving the pardon on that early fall day, Harter said, “restored a lot of pride.” Only now does he understand just how unique he is to have received an Article 125 pardon.  More people have walked on the moon.  Documents obtained by The War Horse through Freedom of Information Act requests show that of the tens of thousands of veterans who were separated from the military due to their sexuality over decades, only 21 ended up applying for a pardon—and only four, including Harter, have received one. The numbers sharply contrast with the White House’s estimate that “thousands” of veterans could be eligible when Biden announced a year ago that he was “righting a historic wrong.” So much has changed since then. Both Biden and President Donald Trump have faced intense criticism for handing out controversial pardons.  Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have been erased under the new administration’s zeal to refocus the military on lethality. Thousands of transgender service members are being discharged and banned from serving. And the Pentagon is considering renaming ships, including the USNS Harvey Milk, named for the slain gay rights activist and veteran who was discharged over his sexuality, that don’t fit a “warrior” ethos.  While The War Horse had previously reported on the low number of pardon applications for LGBTQ+ veterans, records disclosed last month by the Office of the US Pardon Attorney are the first to reveal just how few have been granted: two from the Navy, one from the Air Force, and one from the Army. The records provided no other details and don’t explain why other applicants were denied. Harter is the only one of the pardoned veterans who has come forward to share his story. “I never expected to be pardoned,” he said. “But I don’t think it [the court-martial] should have ever happened to start with, so I felt like there was some redemption there.”  Harter was an Army staff sergeant before he was court-martialed. Courtesy James Harter A PALTRY PROMISE?  After the initial excitement over Biden’s Article 125 pardon announcement, it soon became clear to LGBTQ+ veteran advocates that many waiting for relief would be left out.   The pardon’s wording meant that it applied only to veterans who were court-martialed for violations of Article 125, or consensual sodomy, said Dana Montalto, associate director of the Veterans Legal Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. “But there were so many other ways that [lesbian, gay, and bisexual] service members were separated or their behaviors criminalized when they were in service, and the pardon didn’t reach those,” Montalto said. “I think it is a step in the right direction for our federal government to be making amends, but it certainly was not a solution to the problem,” she said. LGBTQ+ veterans were often outed by fellow service members or caught up in military witch hunts.  “Additional charges were often weaponized against service members, whether they were true or not,” said Cathy Marcello, deputy director at the Modern Military Association of America, an organization of LGBTQ+ service members. “Circumstances might look very bad on paper, but might not reflect what actually is historically accurate to this person’s conviction.”  LGBTQ+ veterans were also regularly charged with Article 134 (indecent conduct or adultery), Article 92 (failure to obey a direct order), and other transgressions. Any of these additional offenses would make a veteran ineligible for Biden’s pardon.  Last year, The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for Defense Department memos or reports to understand why the White House suggested thousands of veterans would benefit from Biden’s pardon. The agency denied the request, however, saying the documents were part of the decision-making process and therefore protected. In May, The War Horse once again tried to contact the Office of the Pardon Attorney and Department of Justice for comment on this issue and received no response.  Advocates say there is another major reason for the low numbers: The burden is entirely on the veteran to apply for clemency and prove that they qualify. Unlike some mass pardons, Biden’s action requires that each veteran fill out a form, which could be daunting or bring up painful emotions.  Peter Perkowski, legal director at Minority Veterans of America, said the administration could have made the process easier. “They could have put the onus on the Defense Department to review all the [Article] 125 convictions and change them if it’s appropriate,” he said, “or they could have sent letters out to people at their last known address.” Ultimately, he said, “there were a lot of things they could have done. They did none of it.” The White House hosted a Pride event on June 26, 2024, hours after Biden’s proclamation announcing pardons for many LGBTQ+ veterans.Abe McNatt DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR COVID VACCINE REFUSERS  Earlier this year, Trump issued an executive order granting reinstatement eligibility, plus back pay, for more than 8,700 service members discharged solely for refusing a Covid vaccine. In contrast with the LGBTQ+ veterans, the Department of Defense stipulated that all eligible former service members discharged over Covid vaccines should be contacted by mail, email (if possible), and phone and invited to apply for reinstatement. And in May, the president pardoned a former Army officer who was court-martialed for refusing to obey Covid safety rules.   A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from The War Horse.  Perkowski can’t help but feel there is some bigotry at play. “There has been such a swift restorative justice action from the government to purportedly fix the mistakes the Defense Department made with Covid-related discharges,” he said. “Even though ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed 15 years ago, that has never happened for this community.”  And pardons don’t automatically change a veteran’s discharge status, said Christie Bhageloe, director of the Statewide Veterans Project at Florida Legal Services. Even if a veteran gets pardoned, they still have to apply for a discharge upgrade to be eligible for VA and other benefits. The pardon—and a recent class-action lawsuit win—may help, but it isn’t a guarantee. And unlike with the Covid executive order, there are no retroactive benefits.  “Even if everything goes well and you get a pardon and a full discharge upgrade to honorable, it doesn’t bring back your military career,” Bhageloe said. “It doesn’t fix the fact that you were a volunteer for the military during an all-volunteer force and we essentially discarded them.”  The United Kingdom and Canada faced similar reckonings with the treatment of their gay and lesbian military members. But unlike the United States, both countries have made formal, public apologies and started funds for monetary reparations to pay LGBTQ+ service members who lost benefits after being kicked out of the military.   More than three decades after being court-martialed, Harter said he feels disconnected from other veterans because of his experience. Courtesy James Harter PARDONS AS A POLITICAL TOOL  Over the last year, both Biden and Trump were busy wielding their clemency powers, from Biden granting his son Hunter a pardon to Trump clearing political allies and contributors, including tax evaders and January 6 protesters.  “I think the difference is my pardon was done for a crime that no longer exists,” Harter said. “For crimes that still exist, there should be some other extenuating circumstance that justifies a pardon. Not just a political favor.” Eligible veterans are still able to apply for the Article 125 pardon on the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website. A Department of Justice spokesperson failed to provide The War Horse with an update on the pardon numbers since the office responded May 1 to our original request. Advocates say Trump’s decision to ban transgender troops from the military may make more LGBTQ+ veterans hesitant to apply for a pardon.   “Over time, more people might apply,” Montalto said, “but I would imagine some people who might have considered applying no longer wish to do so.” For others, it doesn’t matter who the president is, said Perkowski—the loss of trust is irreparable. “They do not trust the government, regardless of who is in charge, to do the right thing for them,” he said. Even after Harter left the military, his conviction followed him. He had to explain it during every employment background check, and he believes the experience escalated his downward spiral into drug and alcohol addiction. Plus, he lost access to all VA health care benefits and education benefits that he was getting through his service and had to finish working his way through college on his own. He feels disconnected from other veterans, despite having served for eight years in the late 1980s—two as a tank crewman and six as a field artillery repair specialist—and earning an Army Commendation Medal.  Although he’s now been sober for 35 years and recently retired from his job as a travel nurse, “these charges have haunted me,” he said.  His journey to clear his name is still not complete.  Even though Harter now has his pardon, he still had to separately apply to get his bad conduct discharge changed to an honorable discharge.  He was told the process could take up to 18 months. Five months after he sent his application, he’s still waiting. The pardon may help his cause, advocates said, but there is no guarantee that his discharge will be upgraded. Nearly four decades later, it’s one last hurdle. Getting his discharge record restored, he said, would “help me return to that sense of pride.” This War Horse investigation was reported by Leah Rosenbaum, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHERE TO FIND HELP FILING FOR A PARDON OR DISCHARGE UPGRADE Veterans who believe they might qualify to receive a pardon for Article 125 offenses can request a pardon on the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website at this link: justice.gov/pardon/apply-clemency.  If you’re not sure if you qualify, these legal clinics offer free help for LGBTQ+ veterans seeking pardons, discharge upgrades, and other services: * National Veterans Legal Services Program (National) * The Veterans Consortium (National) * Florida Veterans Justice Project (Florida only) * Swords to Plowshares (Northern California only) * Harvard Veterans Law Unit (Greater Boston area prioritized) * Yale Veterans Legal Services Clinic (Connecticut only) Or go to statesidelegal.org/stateside-map, enter your state, and click “Law School Programs” under “Organization Type” to find a free program near you.  Even veterans with a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge rating may still be eligible for VA benefits by filling out a Character of Discharge Determination form. Learn more here. 

In late March, the US Department of Education put state education officials on notice: No longer would the federal government tolerate what the agency described in a Dear Colleague Letter as the widespread infringement on parents’ rights to direct the schooling of their kids. “By natural right and moral authority, parents are the primary protectors of their children,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared in a cover letter attached to the guidance. “Yet many states and school districts have enacted policies that presume children need protection from their parents.” Like many of the executive orders and other directives coming out of the Trump administration since January, the guidance focused largely on trans and queer students—in this case, their right to privacy (or lack thereof). But McMahon’s sweeping rhetoric framed the issue as something much bigger. “Attempts by school officials to separate children from their parents, convince children to feel unsafe at home, or burden children with the weight of keeping secrets from their loved ones is a direct affront to the family unit,” she wrote. The US Supreme Court has long held that the parental right to direct the upbringing of one’s children is fundamental. But McMahon’s letter highlights how the Trump administration is weaponizing that idea to a degree that scholars and advocates say is unprecedented at the national level. The ideology of parental rights has emerged as a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda, repeatedly invoked by him and others to justify the rollback of a wide range of policies—involving civil rights, education, public health, and reproductive health—that conservatives have vociferously opposed.  Some of the biggest supporters of the Trump administration’s actions are Christian nationalists intent on imposing a near-limitless idea of parental rights on American society, legal scholars and children’s rights advocates say. In the view of religious ultraconservatives, any government infringement on the right of parents to control every aspect of their children’s upbringing violates both the laws of the land and the laws of God.  > “Christian nationalists feel like, with Trump in control, they have the > political and cultural momentum, and they’re pushing to make this happen right > now.” “Christian nationalists feel like, with Trump in control, they have the political and cultural momentum behind them, and they’re pushing to make this happen right now,” says Samuel Perry, a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma and a leading scholar of the religious right. “They feel like, OK, this is our chance, and we are not going to apologize about pushing our agenda.” The parental rights agenda has found eager supporters on Capitol Hill, in state legislatures, and with state and federal courts. Here are some examples: * In January, Republicans in both houses of Congress introduced the “Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act,” which would empower parents to use parental rights as a defense for any behavior that falls short of “serious physical injury” to or death of their child. * At least 22 states have enshrined “parental bills of rights” into their laws, reports the ultra-conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, which was responsible for Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the Trump 2.0 era. One of those states, Texas, just passed another bill that prohibits the government from infringing on “the fundamental rights granted to parents by their Creator.” Among other things, it bans DEI hiring programs in K-12 schools and school-authorized LGBTQ clubs. * Lawmakers and courts have been using parental rights to roll back reproductive protections for minors. In May, a Florida appeals court ruled that the state’s “judicial bypass” law allowing teenagers to seek a judge’s sign-off for an abortion violated the rights of parents. Last year, the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals partially sided with a Texas father who sued to block Title X clinics in the state from offering birth control to minors without parental consent.  * Even child labor protections have been getting the “parental rights” treatment, with more than a dozen states weakening labor laws for children since 2021. An expansive idea of parental rights is also before the US Supreme Court this term. The case of Mahmoud v. Taylor was brought by a group of religious parents who opposed the required reading of LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks in public schools. A decision is expected by the end of June.  Legal scholars note that increasingly, conservatives are deploying “parental rights” as a way to advance regressive and unpopular social policies. Their strategy has been successful because “almost everybody can agree on the importance of parental rights,” says Naomi Cahn, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. “It’s a good Trojan horse.” But for Christian nationalists, “parental rights” is much more than a buzz phrase—it is part of a deeply held belief system, rooted in religion and patriarchy. They’re not egalitarians, Perry says. “They live in a world of authorities and hierarchies. One of those includes parents [having authority] over their children.” He points out that allowing “for the possibility that a child could kick against that [authority] to carve out their own space…is out of the question.” > “They live in a world of authorities and hierarchies. One of those includes > parents [having authority] over their children.” Whatever adherents are motivated by—a sincerely held belief in the rights of parents, or something more cynical—the expansion of parental rights comes at a cost to the very children that conservatives vow to “protect,” child advocates warn. “They may want to cloak this in the words ‘parents’ rights,’ but it’s about authoritarianism,” says Rebecca Gudeman, who leads health policy initiatives at the National Center for Youth Law. “It’s not about one parent’s ability to create a safe space for their child, it’s about controlling society.” Parental rights are far from being a new rallying cry. They have been invoked to support or oppose a slew of policies for over a century—titans of industry in the 1920s, for example, warned that restricting child labor would threaten the “fundamental institution” of the family. Around the same time, the Supreme Court issued two seminal opinions establishing parental rights in education: Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which respectively struck down an English-only instruction law and a compulsory public education law. But the modern parental rights movement was born when the Supreme Court ordered public schools to desegregate in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Fearmongering by white parents about the federal government’s infringement on their right to direct their children’s schooling led to the widespread establishment of segregation academies: whites-only private schools, some receiving government funding, many of them religiously based. “You had largely evangelical Christian conservative populations in the American South say, ‘This was about family values, this is about traditional families. It’s not about racism. It’s just about us wanting to control our own families and their education,’” Perry says. “But of course, it looks a lot like segregation, and it looks a lot like just retreating from mainstream culture and values.”   Over the years, many of the hardest-fought parental-rights battles have been waged over education and reproductive health. In the 1980s and ’90s, its rhetoric was used to challenge sex education in public schools and school curriculums more broadly and to push for the right of parents to withdraw their children from school and teach them at home. Parental rights arguments also led to the passage of dozens of state laws requiring parental consent or notification for minors seeking abortion after Roe v. Wade in 1973.  > In the past, parental rights laws were aimed at “giving parents an individual > decision about whether to opt in or opt out of something, or to make an > individualized decision for their child.” Now, many of these laws “create > mandates coming top down from the state.” Importantly, most parental-rights laws of this era were aimed at “giving parents an individual decision about whether to opt in or opt out of something or to make an individualized decision for their child,” says abortion historian Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. But since 2020, that’s changed: Now many of these laws “create mandates coming top down from the state, imposing [ideas or actions] on all parents in the name of parents’ rights.” The pandemic was a turning point for the parental rights movement. With school closures in early 2020, parents became much more involved in their children’s education—and many were clamoring for school re-openings or appalled by what they saw. Add to this, the “racial reckoning” that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, and conservatives became mobilized in opposing curriculum changes around the teaching of American history. “Covid-19 opened parents’ eyes to the pervasive indoctrination taking place in many classrooms,” McMahon wrote in her March letter to educators. “Families across the country saw gender ideology and critical race theory taught on-screen at their own kitchen tables.”  Beginning in earnest in 2021, issues like vaccine requirements and mask mandates were weaponized in the name of parental rights by fledgling rightwing groups like Moms for Liberty as well as conservative behemoths such as the Alliance Defending Freedom. But the parental rights movement’s biggest obsession was diversity and school curricula focused on America’s racial, and racist, history. The CRT Forward Tracking Project at the UCLA law school found that local, state, and federal government bodies introduced nearly 900 policy proposals targeting critical race theory and diversity initiatives from September 2020 through the end of 2024. “Parents’ rights cannot help but be racialized,” UCLA law professor LaToya Baldwin Clark wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2023, calling the parental rights movement and the anti-CRT movement “twins.” “The movements work in tandem because they are born from the same parent: White supremacy.” The next wave of bills focused on queer and trans kids. Queer acceptance—particularly the notion that children can be trans—was a direct threat not only to the order of men and women in society but to the authority of parents over children, Perry says. Hundreds of anti-trans bills, pushed by religious right groups, flooded state legislatures in the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency. When Florida passed its then-groundbreaking Parental Rights in Education bill in 2022—banning, among other things, teaching about gender and sexuality from kindergarten through third grade—then-Republican House Speaker Chris Sprowls called the year “the session of Florida parents.” Meanwhile, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a new flurry of actions targeting minors seeking abortion and other forms of reproductive care—notably, “abortion trafficking bans” in Idaho and Tennessee that make it a crime to help teenagers cross state lines to get an abortion. Cases like these prompted Ziegler and her colleagues to take a broader look at how parental rights are being used by conservatives: not to protect individual parents’ rights but to bring about a sweeping policy realignment that rolls back progressive policies. They call this strategy “retrenchment by diversion.”  “The idea is that you have to invoke some other goal—[in this case,] parental rights—to advance your agenda when you know that voters would be much more likely to reject it if you named what it was you were prioritizing,” Ziegler says. “There are bona fide movements for parental rights, and then there are movements with very different agendas that have hitched their star to parental rights arguments when they think doing so will help.”  > “There are bona fide movements for parental rights, and then there are > movements with very different agendas that have hitched their star to parental > rights arguments when they think doing so will help.”  Conservatives stop short of promoting parental rights when to do so would conflict with their other beliefs—like banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth, regardless of whether parents support such care for their own children. Maxine Eichner, a family law scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sees this as evidence that the real goal of many parental rights bills is to turn back the clock on broad policies that conservatives abhor. “Recent uses of parental consent statutes seem like a subtle, or not so subtle, attempt by legislatures just to force minors to forgo some activity that the legislature simply doesn’t like,” Eichner says. Perry has seen what he describes as “a form of local resistance among red states to push parental rights” transformed, after Trump’s election, to become “mainstreamed at the national level.” It doesn’t matter to the religious right that Trump isn’t exactly a model Christian, Perry adds. The president is “Christian enough” since he represents a political vision that Christian nationalists want: A strong patriarch willing to break things in pursuit of what they see as righteous goals. “Whether they think Donald Trump should teach their Sunday school, I think they wouldn’t have that,” Perry says. But “he fights for their team. He is powerful. He doesn’t apologize, he’s not democratic, he’s not egalitarian. He’s an authority, and he issues executive orders, which they love. … So they do see him as a Christian leader in as much as he is leading our country back to ultimate authority: authority of the Bible, patriarchal authority, authority of God.”  This aggressive push for a no-guardrails version of parental rights has made children’s rights advocates deeply alarmed, because, put simply, parents don’t always act in the best interest of their children. Certainly, many well-meaning parents make decisions with good intentions that nonetheless end up having long-term negative consequences for their children. But as it expands its power, the parental rights movement is resisting efforts to impose minimal constraints in order to protect children from harm.  For example, this year’s battle over homeschooling regulation in Illinois. The state has among the loosest regulations on homeschooling in the United States, with no record-keeping mandates or requirements that a parent or other teacher has a high school diploma or a GED. When the legislature tried to pass a law addressing the lack of regulations—prompted by an investigation by ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois, which found that fatal child abuse went unaddressed due to the state’s homeschooling laws—homeschool advocates, supported by the Home School Legal Defense Association, launched a nationally-reaching opposition campaign. The bill’s sponsor, Democrat Rep. Terra Costa Howard, told multiple news outlets that she received a death threat in the mail. “God said ‘Do Not Kill,’ but also said ‘Smite thine enemy.’ We’re watching,” the anonymous letter read. > View this post on Instagram > > > > > A post shared by HSLDA (@hslda) The anti-regulation campaign was effective: Despite passing out of committee, the bill never received a floor vote in the Democrat-controlled House and died when the legislative session ended on May 31. That disappointed a homeschool reform advocate I’ll call Elizabeth, who calls the legislation’s attempts at oversight “bare minimum.” Elizabeth was homeschooled in Illinois from third through eighth grade and says her later education and transition to the workforce suffered from a lack of structure, oversight, and accountability. “The sheer spectrum of what can go wrong is so wide,” she says, “from something this simple like, I just was not educated, to situations of deep and horrific abuse that can happen when there’s [no regulation] in place.” The parental rights movement thinks about issues in terms of what parents want, rather than what children need, says Anna, another woman whose childhood experiences being homeschooled in Illinois have made her an advocate for more regulation. “My parents are the consumers of homeschooling, they’re the consumers of the curriculum,” Anna says. “But once I turn 18, they are done.” And then it’s left to the now-adult homeschooled children to pick up the pieces.  > “We have this legal historical construct, both in the world of policy and the > world of litigation, we have been trying to shed, which is that children are > chattel.” Homeschooling is far from the only issue that worries children’s rights advocates contemplating the Trump 2.0 era. In opposing the proposed “Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act” introduced by Republicans in Congress, the bipartisan advocacy organization First Focus Campaign for Children underscores the threats to children’s well-being. Child abuse that falls short of “serious injury or death” would be harder to prosecute, particularly with the built-in parental rights defense afforded by the bill. State-level vaccine mandates for education could be nullified (alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push for greater vaccine scrutiny at the federal level). Requirements that parents “make and consent to” all healthcare for children would prevent adolescents from accessing STI treatment, mental health care, and reproductive health services, while likely denying them the right to refuse medical treatment that has proven to be harmful, including anti-queer “conversion” therapy.  “Parents are the guardians and not the owners of children,” First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley wrote in a February letter to lawmakers. “Policymakers should reject philosophies that treat children as the property of parents or that assume children lack independent reason, agency, or understanding of their own ‘best interests.’” It’s a battle that’s as old as this country. For much of our history, white women were considered the property of their husbands and children the property of their fathers (marriages between enslaved people weren’t legally recognized, and neither were their parental rights). The family patriarch could force his children to work, enlist his sons in the military, marry off his daughters, and otherwise harm his children under the guise of corrective punishment. “We have this legal historical construct, both in the world of policy and the world of litigation, we have been trying to shed, which is that children are chattel,” says Kristen Weber, the National Center for Youth Law’s senior director of child welfare. The rise of the parental rights movement makes one thing clear, she adds: “We haven’t really fully gotten there.”

In early May, the small city of Banning, California, hosted the Palm Springs Hot Rodeo. The competition, which has occurred most years for the past 50, salutes the homoeroticism of rodeo culture. The four-day event—an official stop on the International Gay Rodeo Association circuit—features traditional rodeo events like steer wrestling and calf roping, along with more whimsical activities like a wild drag race, in which a person in drag rides a steer while their teammates guide it, and goat dressing, in which a pair attempts to put tighty-whities on a goat as quickly as possible. All events are open to any gender—men can barrel race and women can bull ride. “A lot of gay people can’t be incorporated into the other rodeo world,” contestant Savannah Smith told me. “You can do whatever you want here,” she added, “and everyone here is supportive.”  This year, the festive event took place against increasing attacks on queer rights. Two days after the rodeo ended, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender soldiers in the US military. It is unclear what will be targeted next; some fear the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage. Against this backdrop, the Hot Rodeo serves as an important reminder of the resilience of queer culture in America, with its inclusive celebration of LGBTQ athleticism and joy.  Curt Black and Bob Bayne set up contestant registration at the Tool Shed, a gay bar in Palm Springs, 30 minutes away from Banning, where the Hot Rodeo takes place. Alexander Saites partners with Matthew Garcia during the rodeo’s dance contest. Curt Black shows off his Palm Springs Hot Rodeo Outstanding Volunteer buckle. Zac Rogen, a Hot Rodeo participant, says gay rodeos help keep queer representation in Western culture. Brian Helander warms up his horse before competing in the Hot Rodeo. Bob Bayne and Daniel Guevara participate in the rodeo’s “riderless horse” tradition. The riderless horse symbolizes those involved with the International Gay Rodeo Association who have since died, particularly those who died from complications with AIDS. Rodeo director Sylvia Mower takes off her hat during the riderless horse procession. David Lawson and Greg Begay compete in the steer decorating event. The goal is for a team of two to tie a ribbon on a steer’s tail as quickly as possible. Begay, who has been involved with gay rodeos for years, says, “It’s always been my goal in life to rodeo, and it just so happens that I’m gay.” Brian Contratto and Gunner Sizemore compete in the goat dressing event. The goal is to catch a goat and place a pair of underwear on it as quickly as possible. Brian Contratto shows off a tooth that broke in half during his steer riding event. Katie Shaw and Pepe Lozada compete in the team roping event. Love Bailey, the rodeo’s community grand marshal, performs during the grand entry. Chris Otten holds his cowbell, painted with a pride flag, after competing in the bull riding event. Rodeo contestants Steven Housley and Scott Reed pose for a portrait. The Palm Springs Hot Rodeo is the first gay rodeo Reed has participated in. “It’s the most welcoming group I’ve ever been around,” he says, adding, “Everyone here is equal.” Two men dance together at the Dancing Under the Stars party hosted by the Palm Springs Hot Rodeo at Oscar’s, a bar in downtown Palm Springs.

Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston. Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. “They’re targeting us,” Hixenbaugh recalls. “My wife, my kids, me—and it’s about race.”  So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating and soon discovered that “the ugliness of our national politics was really playing out at the most visceral level in these suburbs.” Hixenbaugh’s reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools, specifically those in Southlake, Texas, a suburb of Dallas where parents were engaged in heated, emotional battles over race, gender, DEI programs, and the role of public education in the US. As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app.

On Tuesday, a group of religious parents had their day at the Supreme Court, hoping the justices would grant them something extraordinary: the ability to pull their kids out of a classroom whenever instruction verges into territory that contradicts their religious beliefs. Based on the justices’ responses in oral arguments, those parents are very likely to win the day—and public education may never be the same. The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, came out of Montgomery County, Maryland, where a group of Christian and Muslim parents, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Christian legal advocacy firm, are suing the the county board of education for the ability to pull their kids from the classroom when certain books with LGBTQ content are read. While the attorney representing the parents was careful to say that they could never dictate what was taught—they simply want the option to opt out—that’s not where such a demand leads. A classroom where kids will be escorted out every time information about an LGBTQ person or subject comes up is one in which, ultimately, those subjects will be suppressed. The few parents who want to shield their children from knowledge about LGBTQ people may go a long way toward eradicating the idea of their existence from American classrooms. We know this opt-out route doesn’t work because the school district already tried it three years ago —and, as my colleague Sarah Szilagy explains, it failed. During oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch raised the possibility that the Montgomery County Board of Education didn’t actually end the policy because of infeasibility, but because of animus. “We have some statements from Board members suggesting,” Gorsuch said, quoting the parents’ brief, “that some parents might be promoting hate and suggesting that it was unfortunate that they were taking a view endorsed by white supremacists and xenophobes.” Based on these comments (which the board’s lawyer said were intemperate, but taken out of context), Gorsuch pressed, why shouldn’t the court treat this as a religious discrimination case? And, he implied, why shouldn’t the court side with the parents on those grounds? Gorsuch’s question is worth turning on the court itself. When a majority rules in June, as it almost certainly will, that religious parents can pull their kids out of a classroom whenever a book or lesson contradicts their religious beliefs, it will be fair to ask whether those justices applied the law neutrally, or whether they acted out of religious animus against LGBTQ people: whether their own disinclination to view LGBTQ people and their lives in a positive light led them to attempt to banish such views from public school classrooms. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, was dismayed that a teacher might explain “transgenderism” according to instructional material that read, as she quoted: “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us boy or girl based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re wrong. When someone’s transgender, they guess wrong. When someone’s cisgender, they guessed right.” Barrett called that more about “influence” than “communicating respect”; if so, how does Barrett think teachers should define being transgender? Consider this wild hypothetical from Justice Samuel Alito, in which he describes a completely unrealistic scenario about how tolerance of LGBTQ people could be weaponized to attack Catholics like himself: > Suppose a school says we’re going to talk about same-sex marriage and same-sex > marriage is legal in Maryland and it’s a good thing, it’s moral, it makes > people happy, same-sex couples form good families, they raise children. Now, > there are those who disagree with that. Catholics, for example, they disagree > with that. They think that it’s not moral, but they’re wrong and they’re bad > and anybody who doesn’t accept that same-sex marriage is normal and just as > good as opposite-sex marriage is not a good person. Alan Schoenfeld, the attorney who represented the county board of education, said that would be coercion. But the example demonstrated Alito’s long-held belief that LGBTQ rights are actually a vehicle for attacks on religious people like himself. Then there’s this (lightly edited) exchange between Alito and Schoenfeld, in which Alito grows increasingly upset at the idea that children should hear a positive portrayal of two men getting married, as happens in one of the books raised in the case, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding. Like Barrett, Alito argued that a positive portrayal of an LGBTQ issue is intrinsically coercive. The back-and-forth gets at the key question in the case: Is exposure to a fact or idea a burden or form of coercion on religious expression? > Alito: Exposure is telling the students that there are a lot of people who > marry a person of the opposite sex, there are also people who marry a person > of the same sex. Period. Leave it at that. That’s exposure. If you go beyond > that, is it still exposure? > > Schoenfeld: It depends on the context. I mean, I think Uncle Bobby’s Wedding > is teaching third graders or second graders precisely that. It’s telling it > through a story. > > Alito: I think it clearly goes beyond that. It doesn’t just say that Uncle > Bobby and Jamie are getting married. It expresses the idea subtly, but it > expresses the idea this is a good thing. “Mommy, said Chloe, I don’t > understand, why is Uncle Bobby getting married. Bobby and Jamie love each > other, said Mommy. When grownup people love each other that much, sometimes > they get married.” I mean, that’s not sending—subtly sending the message this > is a good thing? > > Schoenfeld: I think that’s a way of a mother consoling her daughter who’s > annoyed that they are favorite uncle is distracted and doesn’t have time for > her. But even if the message were some people are gay, some people > get married, I don’t think there’s anything impermissibly normative about > that. It is a story that is being used to teach students that, just as in the > 99 of the 100 books that we read about couples, it’s a man and a woman, there > also may be a man and a man. > > Alito: Why is the Montgomery County Board of Education in this argument > running away from what they clearly want to say? They have a view that they > want to express on these subjects. And maybe it’s a very good view, but they > have a definite view. And that’s the whole point of this curriculum; is it > not? > > Schoenfeld: I think what’s in the record is that the Board wants to teach > civility and respect for difference in the classroom. There is obviously an > incidental message in some of these books that these life choices and these > life styles are worthy of respect. I don’t know how you can teach students to > respect each other without teaching that… So the incidental message that these > things ought to be normalized and treated with respect, I think, is simply > part of the work that the school is doing in cultivating respect in a > pluralistic school. > > Alito: Well, the plaintiffs here are not asking the school to change its > curriculum. They’re just saying, look, we want out. Why isn’t that feasible? > What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this? > > Schoenfeld: I think on the facts of this case, we have the natural experiment > of the school’s permitting these opt-outs and then finding that it was not > administrable. > > > Alito: Well, why is it not administrable? The debate went on, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh jumping in to claim that if schools can set up an alternative health class—a single discrete class where an alternative is mandated by the state, and therefore prepped in advance—then surely they could do it for parents who don’t want their kids exposed to Uncle Bobby’s Wedding. Schoenfeld took one last stab at trying to explain the problem: > If you think about the way a third-grade classroom operates and you think > about the fact that there are some students sitting in the corner, and they > say: This is a great book, I’m going to take it off the shelf, and three and > then five and then nine students gather around to read it, and they say: > Teacher, I want you to come over and watch us doing that. All of those things, > I think, fall within the definition of “curriculum” at that lower grade. > > > It’s mayhem. And the ability of teachers to manage the line between what is > curriculum content coming directly from the teacher and coming indirectly from > the sort of socialization in the classroom, I think, is very hard to draw. Kavanaugh and Barrett, whose kids are still young, must know this. Alito and the other Republican-appointed justices surely do as well. But the infeasibility is really the point. If you can’t actually accommodate some parent’s opt-out requests, then the religious beliefs of those parents begin to dictate what is discussed in the classroom. If you can’t feasibly remove students every time a book is opened, or every time a student raises their hand to ask what transgender means, then that content is ultimately silenced, and with it the idea that LGBTQ people exist, much less are normal and deserving of respect. It’s why some commenters have taken to calling this the “Don’t Say Gay” case—because that’s where it leads. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson even got the Justice Department’s Sarah Harris, who argued for the Trump administration in support of the parents, to admit that the ramifications could travel beyond the classroom. “There are obviously going to be contexts besides the school context in which we would agree that there is a burden,” she said. The question isn’t who will win the case, but how big a win it will be. If Gorsuch’s logic about animus on the Board of Education prevails, then the ruling could apply just to Montgomery County schools. But if the view is adopted that exposure to the idea that it’s okay for men to marry men is now a violation of the Free Exercise Clause, then public education across the country could change dramatically. If so, it will be only logical to wonder whether exposure to the idea of a socially accepted gay couple is deemed unconstitutional because parents’ religious rights have been violated—or because the justices’ own inability to accept LGBTQ people has prevailed.