Gillian Branstetter

Harper to the judge: "Your driver's license doesn't list your height and weight at birth. It doesn't list where you used to live. It identifies who you are now."

This is the thing about bathroom bans targeting trans people - assault is already a crime! Indecent exposure is already a crime! And laws that protect trans people don't suddenly make them legal

Starting now

We're in court today asking a judge to block a new Kansas law that invalidates the IDs of transgender people and allows anyone to sue a person they suspect of being trans for using public restrooms.

This law has been wreaking havoc on trans people and we're demanding an immediate end to it.

Understanding the New Kansas Law Targeting Transgender People - ACLU of Kansas This resource will be further developed as we have more information. If you or a loved one is impacted by Senate Bill 244 becoming a law, contact us by visiting aclu.org/KS_SB244 or by clicking the li...

We'll update this page if/when we get an order from the judge

Keep thinking of how she told the FBI agents she was wary of speaking with them because she thought it was unlikely it would change anything. Echoes of Christine Blasey Ford saying she was "just jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway"

He's putting up record job losses, driving the country into a war he can't even explain, and was credibly accused of raping a teenager in the Epstein files released yesterday - so of course it's time to try and ruin more trans people's lives

At 1:30 Central/2:30 Eastern, my colleague @harperseldin.bsky.social will be in state court in Kansas asking a judge to block the new law that invalidated the driver's licenses of trans people across the state. You can tune into the hearing here

She "again asked [the FBI agents] what the point would be of providing the information at this point in her life when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it."

"'From the get-go, he didn't like that I was a boy-girl' (referencing a tomboy)...TRUMP mentioned something to the effect of 'Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be.'"

Trans Porn Is Booming. Trans Rights Are Fading We asked trans adult creators about the complicated link between desire and politics, as trans porn is booming while rights fade.

Interesting interview in Playboy with transgender adult content creators. People often point to Pornhub stats showing trans content is more popular than ever as a contradiction, as if political and sexual objectification were ever mutually exclusive

Shapiro's burned bridges: He's popular with voters, not so much with fellow Dem officials "There are lots of people the governor counts as allies ... who have serious beefs with him privately."

I mean he is genuinely very popular with voters www.axios.com/2026/01/25/j...

How Third Way’s president plans to avoid the Biden fate in 2028 The centrist Democratic group’s chief spoke to Semafor about how to steer the party toward a candidate who’ll govern and campaign the same way.

Apparently supporting a genocidal apartheid state that has now dragged us into a war is too low saliency to be worth moving left on, but Kamala supporting trans rights lost her the election?

So if somebody says, Josh Shapiro is cooked, he’s going to get filleted by pro-Palestine protesters… That’s absolutely wrong. The left would like everyone to believe that the US relationship with Israel is the No. 1 or No. 2 issue for primary voters. It’s not in the top 15. And if you’re Josh Shapiro, you are not going to win the Democratic presidential primary because you appealed to the anti-Zionist voters. And every successful nominee has a thing that can appear to be a liability, but if they’re smart about it, it becomes an asset, right? Kennedy’s Catholicism, Barack Obama’s race, Bill Clinton’s womanizing — in Shapiro’s case, people will look at him as a guy who won a blue-wall state and is very popular there, which is more important than an issue that’s not in the top 10 that he took a stand on.

This from Third Way's president is fascinating for a few reasons but to start I'd be curious to hear him explain how he thinks Bill Clinton turned his womanizing into an asset

ICE taking steps to close detention center at Fort Bliss, document shows Preparations to shutter Camp East Montana in El Paso come less than eight months after facility’s opening, according to an internal ICE document.

This ICE detention center is the largest in the country and has become notorious for rampant physical abuse, medical neglect, and death.

We won't let up the pressure until it's shut down for good.

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protestor A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the ...

New from 404 Media: Proton Mail, the privacy-focused email service, gave authorities data that let the FBI unmask an anonymous 'Stop Cop City' protester. It was payment data linked to the anonymous email account. From that, FBI ID'd them, then tracked their movements www.404media.co/proton-mail-...

If you live in a major city secondhand marijuana smoke is maybe the cleanest thing you're breathing in on any given day

Profit margin on medspa treatments helps keep the doors open for medical care? Whatever it takes! Offer electrolysis next

Exclusive | Planned Parenthood Wants You to Get Your Botox at Its Clinic Facing a $100 million revenue gap after federal budget cuts, one California affiliate looks beyond reproductive health to attract a new clientele.

More than 50 Planned Parenthood clinics closed in 2025 after Trump illegally froze family planning grants and banned Medicaid reimbursements for non-abortion care like birth control

PP Mar Monte in California is largest affiliate—more may offer botox, perimenopause care, IUD sedation to stay afloat

a man is talking to a group of people while standing in front of a tree . ALT: a man is talking to a group of people while standing in front of a tree .

Trans people who don't watch Drag Race or play complicated board games

Sometimes you're just minding your own business then all of a sudden here comes midnight with a dead moon in it's jaw

Truly I was waging ideological wars in the comments like what a luxury

Introduced in House (02/05/2025) Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act This bill requires certified national governing bodies (NGBs) of amateur sports (e.g., USA Gymnastics) to prohibit a person whose sex is male from participating in an amateur athletic competition that is designated for females, women, or girls. Under the bill, male means an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.

All my favorite people are historical accidents

Realize this is the most laptop class/PMC/Gen-Z-boss-and-a-mini complaint ever but if I give you editing/suggesting access to a shared document and you leave comments suggesting "how about [X]" instead of writing it into the document itself I should be allowed to launch you into the void of space

Right, it's not the same as capitulation. Contrast Mamdani's relationship with Trump to John Fetterman's

I don't think it's a coincidence Talarico and Mamdani cobbled together basically the same demographic coalition in two very disparate areas of the country, and both present coherent worldviews not defined solely by Orange Man Bad

They could criminalize all of this health care and put every doctor in prison and they'd still be writing this masturbatory nonsense

Hi, it's me, the parent who is homophobic but not transphobic. I am working with the same doctors currently being threatened with prosecution by a fascist but are nonetheless beholden to trans activists. We want to create more trans women because they are universally heterosexual

If you sign me up for your newsletter without my consent I will block your email, block you on every social network I'm on, then join new social networks just to block you on those too

as change. I didn't regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn't have survived much longer without passing. And the surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes. Yet I was so afraid to come out and face the world again. I wondered why I had to choose the opening years of the Reagan administration and the rise of the Moral Major-ity to demand the right to be myself. Would they arm villagers with torches and stakes and stalk me through the countryside? Would I stand alone, handcuffed in a precinct cell, with no one to turn to if I survived the nightmare? But then I acknowledged that no matter who had been in the White House, it had always been hard to be me. Between a rock and a hard place-something told me this lifetime wasn't going to get any easier. I'd already been through a lot though, and it didn't seem to me it could get much worse. Once again I couldn't see the road ahead. I was still steering my own course through uncharted waters, relying on constellations that were not fixed. I wished there was some-one, somewhere I could ask: What should I do? But no such person existed in my world. I was the only expert on living my own life, the only person I could turn to for answers.

Rereading Stone Butch Blues