The U.K. government appears to have covered up a dramatic rise in transgender youth suicides, according to data obtained by U.K.-based government accountability non-profit the Good Law Project.

As Erin in the Morning reports, data the non-profit obtained from the National Health Service (NHS)-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) via a Freedom of Information request sharply contrasts with the government’s official report on trans youth suicides in the wake of the 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling.

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As the Good Law Project notes, following the U.K. High Court of Justice’s initial ruling in Tavistock, which found that minors under 16 could not legally consent to receive puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, the National Health Service (NHS) substantially limited access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those limits reportedly remained in place even after the Tavistock ruling was overturned in 2021.

The U.K. government commissioned its 2024 Appleby Report after the Good Law Project reported that two whistleblowers with the Tavistock gender clinic alerted the organization to a significant rise in suicides among young people on the NHS’s waitlist for appointments to begin gender-affirming care in the wake of the Tavistock case.

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According to Good Law Project, the Appleby Report identified only 12 suicide deaths among current or former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) patients at the Tavistock clinic between 2018 and 2024. However, as Erin in the Morning notes, the report disregarded young people who were unable to access GIDS care due to long wait times, which, post-Tavistock, now last an average 25 years.

At the same time, Good Law Project submitted a Freedom of Information request with the NCMD, and has only just published the data it received.

“Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021–2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years,” the organization wrote in a February 7 release. “This spike follows the decision by NHS England to pull down the shutters on gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people” following the Tavistock case.

In total, the NCMD data show 46 transgender children in the U.K. died by suicide between 2019 and 2025. In addition to the nine accounted for between 2019–2021 and the alarming spike to 22 between 2021–2022, the data also show 10 suicide deaths between 2022–2023. And, according to Good Law Project, NCMD added that “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed.”

Good Law Project said it was “appalled” that U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting “commissioned and published a report to reassure the public that there was no significant rise in suicide rates, when 22 children took their own lives in a single year: 2021-22.” The Appleby report, they said, “denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.”

The nonprofit claims that Streeting department “fought tooth and nail” to block its freedom of information requests.

“To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as ‘dangerous’ while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness,” the group said.

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.

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Right-wing media figures are blasting Attorney General Pam Bondi’s bizarre and evasive appearance at a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday.

Greg Kelly, a host for the right-wing media outlet Newsmax, said, “I like her, but she’s in over her head…. I don’t think Pam is living up to that responsibility. Lots of theatrics on her part today before the House … She was not responsive, evasive. And I think she is not to be trusted, and I hope she leaves soon.”

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Fellow Newsmax host Carl Higbie said of Bondi, “Pam Bondi did a real disservice to Donald Trump and this nation, honestly…. Was this hearing entertaining? Oh yeah, it was definitely entertaining. Was it helpful? Not even a little bit…. The hearing was a complete disaster…. After today, I don’t know how her political career survives.”

Right-wing broadcaster Ben Shapiro said that Bondi failed to explain the Department of Justice’s handling of the Epstein files, and added, “So she was was asked about Epstein, and she promptly started doing a cable news spot about how no one should ever mention Epstein again, they should only talk about the stock market…. William Barr, who was AG under President Trump the first time, Bill Barr, was a very good AG. I do not think the same of Pam Bondi. I do not think she’s good at her job…. This was, not great here. Not great at all.”

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Even white supremacist Nick Fuentes said, “Pam Bondi needs to be impeached. You lied about the existence of the files. You lied about unindicted collaborators and accomplices.”

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This week the Trump administration targeted four Democrat-led states with cuts to funding that had already been authorized by Congress for HIV/AIDS monitoring, STD prevention, and studies assessing health risks for people of color, among other programs.

The White House called them “inconsistent with agency priorities.”

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The funds are administered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and total roughly $600 million.

Now the four states – California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado – are suing the administration for reinstatement of the funds, beginning with seeking a restraining order to stop the cuts from taking effect. The lawsuit asserts cutting the previously authorized funds is illegal and would “irreparably harm the states.”

The cuts are “based on political animus,” the complaint says.

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“President Trump is resorting to a familiar playbook,” Rob Bonta (D), the attorney general of California, said in a statement. “He is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda.”

“Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again,” he said.

“The president is really interfering with the constitutional right of Congress to have the power of the purse. There have been countless lawsuits,” John Peller, president and CEO of AIDS Foundation Chicago, told ABC Chicago.

“It makes tremendous sense to be investing in HIV prevention programs if the concern is about saving money,” Peller said.

Among those named in the suit is Russel Vought, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who was a prominent author of Project 2025 and has been instrumental in advancing the Heritage Foundation’s far-right, Christian nationalist agenda in Trump’s second term.

In March 2025, the National Institutes of Health canceled funding for dozens of HIV-related research grants in a drive to stamp out what the Trump administration calls ideologically-driven science.

Among the latest cuts are $1.1 million for HIV surveillance in Los Angeles County; $876,000 to California universities to address “reducing social isolation among older L.G.B.T.Q. adults”; $371,000 to focus on “engaging Latino and African American” men who have sex with men in Colorado; $7 million for the city of Chicago to study populations that are disproportionately affected by STDs; and $5.2 million to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago to increase use of PrEP among Black cisgender women.

A spokesman for OMB told ABC News the CDC cuts affect states with a “history of fraud and mismanagement.”

The same four states, as well as New York, were targeted by the Department of Health and Human Services when it moved just weeks ago to halt $10 billion in social services and child care funding, alleging the money is being misused. A lawsuit against those cuts was also filed in response.

Matthew Rose, senior public policy advocate at the Human Rights Campaign, said cuts to HIV funding could reverse hard-earned gains made against the virus that causes AIDS.

“We are on the precipice of truly transforming the way that prevention has happened,” Rose said. “They’re like, ‘No, let’s pull up all the roots.'”

“You’re looking at billions of dollars getting spent on HIV,” he said. “None of the other HIV organizations and private companies have that kind of money to put into that kind of space.”

“They can’t make up for that gap that we worked so hard for that federal money to do.”

Rose also noted the irony of Trump launching his own program in 2019 to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S. by 2030. The successive waves of funding cuts and grant terminations seem to contradict that goal, he said.

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Clay Parikh — a special government employee whose conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election led to a recent FBI raid in a Fulton County, Georgia election office — thinks that “gay pride” displays in churches are evidence of “the devil trying to brainwash people.”

Parikh reportedly refused to discuss when he became a special government employee or what his duties entail when asked by a journalist with Talking Points Memo (TPM). He did, however, say that a “pure evil” secret political group of “deep state” agents is placing the U.S. in grave danger.

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Parikh, who believes the U.S. hasn’t “had an honest election in decades,” has participated in events with “My Pillow” entrepreneur, election conspiracy theorist, and former crack addict Mike Lindell. Parikh appeared as an expert cybersecurity witness to support the claims of vote rigging alleged by anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Kari Lake — the Arizona Supreme Court tossed Lake’s claim. Parikh also alleged that local “cheating” occurred in the 2024 elections, but he didn’t mention any specific examples.

He then said he had no faith in the United States and that freedom in the country is an illusion. When asked if he had faith in the president, he said, “If you put your faith in people, you’re going to be hurt. The only person I put my faith in is my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, right? So I’m not going to comment about anybody else. All I can tell you is, I’m in this fight.” He then sounded as if he was crying, TPM reported.

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Parikh then claimed that the restaurant chain Cracker Barrell is no longer selling “real chicken,” adding, “[Their] food was going downhill before all their woke stuff.” Conservatives blasted the chain for allegedly going “woke” last August 2025 after a temporary logo rebrand removed an old white guy from its logo. He then claimed he always puts alcohol in his soda “to sanitize it.”

When asked if he thinks that the anti-American deep state trying to destroy the country was “demonic in nature,” he replied, “It’s got to be, you know, and if you’re asking me this to try to turn it around and make me out to be a wack job, that’s whatever.”

“There are a group of people now that, they’ve gone off and they believe this stuff,” Parikh said. “Controlling things and more power, that’s evil. That’s the devil’s work right there. And so, whether they’re actually bowing down, and drinking blood, and doing whatever Satanists will do, that’s irrelevant. When you do pure evil things that violate what God’s instructed us to do, you are evil, you are demonic.”

“Some of the churches are wrong that have gay pride stuff in it,” he added. “That’s not a church. That’s obviously the devil trying to brainwash people. That’s my personal beliefs.”

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