Madison Pauly

A year and a half ago, @hencarnell.bsky.social and I investigated the movement to resurrect conversion therapy

Now, oral arguments are about to begin in a Supreme Court case, Chiles v. Salazar, that could overturn bans in 23 states.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

For furloughed workers, Trump's partisan shutdown jabs are just the latest slight “Not only is it insulting to the standards we’re all supposed to abide by, but it’s also insulting to our intelligence.”

Can't get over this NIH employee reacting to possible Hatch Act violations in the administration's shutdown spin: "I liked the fact that I still had the capacity for disappointment.”

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Congrats to @jollyette.bsky.social on her first @motherjones.com byline!!

“As far as I am concerned,” Guyatt recounted telling people affiliated with SEGM in a recent conversation, “you are not evidence-based.”

It was a burn that only the guy who coined the term “evidence-based medicine” could give.

Trump rewards MAGA attack dog attorney general with FBI post "If Andrew Bailey can do this much damage in Missouri, imagine what he’ll do with federal power."

I've had a Google Alert set on Missouri AG Andrew Bailey for a couple years. His aggressive (and at times extralegal) attacks on abortion, local Democrats, trans people often get slapped down in court. But winning wasn't the point. The point was building a rep.

Now he's headed to help run the FBI.

Women all over the country are suing police for failing to test their rape kits. But they faced a blow from the Supreme Court on Monday.

& over www.motherjones.com/criminal-jus...

The chilling story of three women haunted by the same rapist—and how the law failed them DNA identified a serial predator. The law let him off the hook.

& over www.motherjones.com/criminal-jus...

She said, he sued: How libel law is being turned against MeToo accusers How libel law is being turned against MeToo accusers

& over www.motherjones.com/criminal-jus...

They went to Bible college to deepen their faith. Then they were assaulted—and blamed for it. At Moody Bible Institute, purity culture and complementarianism have worked together to forgive abusers and punish the abused.

& over www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"Independent" investigations into sexual abuse are big business. Can survivors really trust them? When an aid organization hired agents to investigate her father's violence, the resulting probe became her new nightmare.

& over www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Over
& over
& over

The response to the sexual assault becomes the survivor’s “new nightmare.”

Cops. Courts. Companies. Schools. It’s always the same story.

Read Sam’s latest.

I wish there wasn’t cause to publish stories like this year after year after year.

"What can I even say without having to go to jail?" The end of Roe has hamstrung advocates for pregnant victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Extremely worthwhile to revisit
@juliannemcshane.bsky.social's reporting on reproductive coercion in light of the troubling details of this lawsuit, which involves a boyfriend trying to get a judge to help prevent a partner's abortion.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

He’s suing his girlfriend’s doctor for prescribing abortion pills. Could this gut access everywhere? Texas lawyer Jonathan Mitchell is going after a California doctor, Here’s why that’s terrifying.

The new "wrongful death" abortion pill lawsuit out of Texas is a BFD for several reasons, but one twist is that the doctor being targeted is the brother of lifelong reproductive health advocate Francine Coeytaux of @plancpills.bsky.social

Collab by Nina Martin & me on what the case is all about:

One of the speakers at this was Michelle Cretella. Don't know who she is? Boy, do I have some reading for you.

She is part of a fringe, conservative doctors group that calls itself the American College of Pediatricians.

Damn, Sotomayor's dissent in Mahmoud is chilling. "The Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children." Those themes? "Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist."

Supreme Court once again preserves the Affordable Care Act And cements power in the hands of RFK Jr.

One sigh of relief today: The Supreme Court could have made a bunch of forms of preventive care $$$$ and didn't. This is a short-term win that comes with long-term consequences: RFK Jr. gets more power over what types of preventive care are fully covered. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Super-quick take while reading the ruling:

This is going to be a much bigger deal for challenges to *other* Trump policies than to birthright citizenship (where it's likely that lower courts will still be able to block the policy on a nationwide basis even after this ruling).

*That's* the import.

I know that this is going to be lost in the roar of big players but there are other clinics with a majority of patients who are Medicaid recipients - and this ruling opens up the avenue for states to refuse to allow us to be approved providers of care. And we have far fewer resources to weather it.

And bad for individuals trying to enforce their rights in court :(

The Supreme Court just made it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood “Today’s decision…is a dangerous green light for politicians to target any providers they don’t like."

This is a bad ruling for people who rely Planned Parenthood and any other providers of politically controversial health care. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

First they tried to "cure" gayness. Now they're fixated on "healing" trans people. Inside the movement to resurrect conversion therapy.

And for those wondering what alternative to pediatric gender-affirming care would be preferred by the religious-right groups that support bans, this is it: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

On an press call with @chasestrangio.bsky.social , who says the Skrmetti opinion is "fundamentally wrong" but "much narrower than it could have been."
1. It doesn't say whether Bostock applies beyond Title VII
2. It doesn't say whether transgender status independently warrants heightened scrutiny.

Every abortion-rights story is a trans-rights story, and vice versa. I will be saying this till the day I die.

The Christian Nationalist Boot Camp Pushing Anti-Trans Laws Across America - Type Investigations

And @sarahposner.bsky.social's www.typeinvestigations.org/investigatio...

Inside the secret working group that helped push anti-trans laws across the country Leaked emails give a glimpse of the religious-right networks behind transgender health care bans.

These state laws banning gender-affirming care for youth are a product of religious-right and anti-LGBTQ activist organizing, starting in the years after Obergefell.

We know this, because we have the receipts. Here's my 2023 investigation.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

bsky.app/profile/erin...

This is key. SCOTUS also used this tortured, acrobatic reasoning in the Dobbs decision, relying on Geduldig.

The majority and JUSTICE THOMAS make much of recent changes to the routine provision of gender-affirming care to minors in Norway, Sweden, and England. Ante, at 3–4, 23; ante, at 13–14 (concurring opinion). While all three countries have committed to researching further the risks and benefits of prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to adolescents, none has categorically banned doctors from providing patients with all gender-affirming care where medically necessary. See Brief for Foreign Non-Profit Organizations as Amici Curiae 4–13.

In her dissent, Sotomayor fact-checks the argument that Norway, Sweden, and England have turned against gender-affirming care for minors.

"None," she points out, "has categorically banned doctors from providing patients with all gender-affirming care where medically necessary."

Roberts' opinion cites the Cass Review—"not for
guidance they might provide on the ultimate question of
United States law, but to demonstrate the open
questions regarding basic factual issues before medical authorities and other regulatory bodies," he writes.

"We have not yet considered whether Bostock’s reasoning reaches beyond the Title VII context, and we need not do so here," Roberts wrote.

Importantly, the court did not rule on whether the reasoning in Bostock—the big 2021 case finding that anti-trans and anti-gay discrimination in employment is a kind of sex discrimination—applies beyond employment law. This is one of the most hottest issues in LGBTQ-rights litigation right now.