Hundreds of thousands of people have been moved by a video of Minneapolis anti-ICE protestors singing to ICE agents that they can still change their minds.
The clip, posted by Now This Impact, shows thousands of protestors standing outside hotels where ICE and Border Patrol agents are staying and singing, “It’s okay to change your mind/Show us your courage, leave this behind/It’s okay to change your mind/Then you can join us, join us here anytime.” The song was written by Minneapolis community song circle leader Annie Schlaefer.
Minneapolis residents continue to inspire the nation with their virulent yet peaceful opposition to the ICE occupation of their city. The intensity of the fury over the agents’ violent tactics – which resulted in the deaths of at least two peaceful protestors – has backed the administration into a corner, spurring even many Republicans to speak out against the aggressive operation.
Out MSNow host Rachel Maddow praised the Minneapolis movement as “a political shift” driven by “the people” after Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino was demoted to his old job as Border Patrol sector chief in El Centro, California.
“It starts with the people,” Maddow said. “It starts with the protests that we have seen. Principled, peaceful, relentless protest – it works. That is the source of this shift: peaceful, powerful, relentless, principled protest works. It uses democratic means to save democracy. That has what has made all of this political shifting happen.”
The administration has announced a reduction in the number of ICE agents in the city, but residents have made it clear they will continue to protest until the entire operation is over.
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The country’s largest organization that represents doctors has updated its recommendations for gender-affirming care, endorsing certain limitations on surgery for minors.
The American Medical Association (AMA) is now the second major medical organization (following the American Society of Plastic Surgeons) to walk back its full-fledged support for whatever gender-affirming treatments a doctor and a minor’s family determine the minor needs.
“In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood,” AMA said. Surgical interventions, however, are already almost never performed on minors. Trans minors virtually never receive bottom surgery, though some teenagers ultimately do get top surgery or facial procedures.
The AMA still endorses other gender-affirming care for youth, such as puberty blockers and other hormone therapy. So while its new policy doesn’t change much in practice, it will no doubt contribute to the growing stigma around gender-affirming care. It will also no doubt further embolden the anti-trans movement, giving the right a “win” in its crusade against trans existence.
The change comes one day after the ASPS released a statement advising against conducting “gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery” on people under the age of 19. The ASPS based its statement on two recent reports from the U.K. and the U.S. that were widely criticized by transgender healthcare advocates as being biased.
In its statement, the ASPS admits that it didn’t reach its conclusions through “a formal guideline development process,” independent systematic assessment of existing medical evidence, consultation with consensus panels of medical experts, or strength-of-recommendation determinations weighing the benefits of gender-affirming care against its potential risks.
Rather, the organization admitted that it based its findings wholly on the U.K.’s infamous 2024 Cass Report (which excluded numerous studies demonstrating the benefits of gender-affirming care) and the U.S. Department of Health’s 2025 review (which was anonymously generated in 90 days, underwent no peer-review process, and resulted from a U.S. executive order seeking to ban all gender-affirming care for trans youth).
Both the U.K. and U.S. documents suggested conversion therapy for trans youth, disregarded all research and guidance produced or endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and contradicted the best practices in gender-affirming care for trans youth recommended by all major U.S. medical associations.
Despite the limitations of the ASPS’s statement, the organization said it opposes the criminalization of gender-affirming care. It also said that its policy statement “does not seek to deny or minimize the reality of any patient’s distress, and it does not question the authenticity of any patient’s experience.”
In response to the events of the week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its own statement emphasizing it still fully endorses gender-affirming care. “The AAP continues to hold to the principle that patients, their families and their physicians — not politicians — should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them,” the statement read, according to the New York Times.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) also criticized the changes: “There is no definitive age or one-size-fits-all approach for every patient, which is why they are built on case-by-case assessments, involve experts on adolescent development, and are designed to support thoughtful and ethical shared decision-making in a multidisciplinary field.”
Recent studies have shown that trans youth tend to be consistent in their identities, even after a decade. The findings mirror what has overwhelmingly been found in studies on trans adults, that very few people detransition. A 2024 study found that 97% of trans youth don’t regret transitioning, and another study from the same year showed that fewer than 1% of patients who undergo gender-affirming surgical procedures end up regretting it. In fact, rates of regret are higher for people who get tattoos, elective plastic surgeries, bariatric weight loss surgeries, or have children, the study found.
Trans activist Alejandra Caraballo slammed ASPS earlier this week for hypocrisy over the fact that it continues to do thousands of breast reductions per year on cis girls and boys. “These can carry substantial risks of loss of function, sensitivity, and standard surgical risks,” she wrote. “Yet, ASPS isn’t advising against those.”
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As several cities consider offering free rides on city buses, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is pushing Congress to shut down the practice.
Politico obtained a proposal for inclusion in the upcoming surface transportation bill that would require cities that get money from the Federal Transit Administration to charge a fare for bus transportation or risk losing federal funding.
“This policy would help ensure the largest federally supported systems are safer and more adequately funded by users,” the proposal says, adding that exemptions could be made for people with disabilities, children, students, and veterans.
Currently, only a few cities offer free bus transport in the U.S., including Kansas City, Missouri; Richmond, Virginia; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kansas City, Politico notes, will start charging for buses soon.
Offering free buses is a policy decision that comes with pros and cons. The revenue from fares can be used to expand service networks, for example. The Department of Transportation says that free buses “can result in unsustainable finances for the agency and potential safety issues.”
But it’s unclear why the current administration would want to get involved in what is fundamentally a municipal decision. Politico suggests that the attention brought to the issue by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) may have led to the proposal being floated.
“This proposal makes no sense,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), ranking member of the House Transportation Committee. “Transit agencies are pretty good at making their own decisions about how to operate to meet local needs. The FTA should be in a position to support them, not undermine them.”
The Department of Transportation has not commented on the proposal.
In a world overrun by fake news, Professor Juana María Rodríguez is unflinchingly committed to facts.
Since 2016, the University of California, Berkeley professor has mobilized students to preserve LGBTQ+ stories on one of the world’s most extensive historical records: Wikipedia.
Through a unique course taught in partnership with Wiki Education, Rodríguez and her students produce entries for the site that cover niche LGBTQ+ subjects, many of which have fallen through the cracks due to contributor bias. And as the Trump administration works overtime to erase LGBTQ+ history from the national consciousness, Rodríguez knows that the best defense is putting cold, hard facts in front of as many readers as possible.
“We can really change the narrative of how some of these stories are told,” Rodríguez told LGBTQ Nation, explaining that her students are involved in both editing existing pages and creating new ones.
“The Trump administration can erase the T from Stonewall, but we can point them to 20 academic sources that talk about the centrality of trans people to Stonewall and to other uprisings,” she explained.
In essence, she added, “We bring the receipts.”
Creating lifelong Wikipedians
Professor Juana Maria Rodriguez teaching a Fall 2025 Wikipedia course | Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
Rodríguez has taught the course in nine different iterations over the past decade. Her students have tackled everything from Transfemicide (a page that has now been translated into four languages) to Indigenous Drag Performers to lesser-known activists like Adela Vázquez to the stories of historic, now-shuttered queer bars like Esta Noche and Jewel’s Catch One.
One student, Alexia Guerra Cardona, spoke on a Berkeley podcast about the course’s incredible impact on her. A child of Guatemalan immigrants who fled civil war, Cardona said she is most proud of the content she produced on trans asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America because it helped her feel closer to her own ancestral history. She attended a predominantly white school growing up, where Central American history was never centered.
“You need to know where you come from in order to understand where you’re going or what you want to do,” she said.
Rodríguez has loved watching her students – who often start the course feeling extremely anxious about the responsibility before them – gradually feel empowered to be disseminators of knowledge rather than passive consumers of it.
It is no small accomplishment, she said, to ensure accurate, inclusive information is available to anyone who needs it.
“My goal is always to create Wikipedians,” she said. “To know that they can read something and maybe what they read doesn’t quite reflect what they learned from this class, and they can go in and change that… to make them better or more inclusive or more representative… It feels great for everybody.”
We did that
Professor Juana Maria Rodriguez teaching a Fall 2025 Wikipedia course | Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
Rodríguez emphasized that Wikipedia editing isn’t the wild west. There are strict standards, and some of the larger pages are locked down to experienced editors only. Beyond that, editors constantly communicate with one another to ensure that pages provide accurate information.
“There’s the Wikipedia that we see, and then behind that, every page has a talk page where people talk about issues.”
She said her students have experienced pushback at times, such as when one wanted to add information about same-sex desire in Imperial China to the page on the Han Dynasty.
“The Wikipedia page on the Han dynasty, you can imagine, is very well sourced, it’s very reputable. It had absolutely nothing about same-sex anything… So they brought the receipts, they added a very small section, but now that section exists there.”
But at first, the student received a note warning them of the page’s high quality. But Rodríguez said it only motivated them to ensure accuracy even more. “It was like, OK, we received the warning. We’re going to make sure that we’re bringing high-quality receipts.”
“And we did that.”
Now, anyone who reads about the Han Dynasty will know that, as the page explains, “bisexuality was the norm” among nobility, among whom there was “openness to bisexuality or homosexuality.”
It may seem small, but it is moments like these that affirm that LGBTQ+ people have always been here.
Fighting fire with fact
Professor Juana Maria Rodriguez teaching a Fall 2025 Wikipedia course | Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
Many college students today have no doubt come from the increasing number of K-12 schools (largely in red states) that have taken active steps to suppress curriculum that teaches LGBTQ+ issues or even acknowledges that LGBTQ+ people exist at all.
Over the past several years, GOP-led governments at the state level have authorized a slew of book bans and curriculum restrictions under the guise of “parental rights” in education.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, 19 states have at least one LGBTQ specific school censorship law, while only 8 have a law mandating LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula. The organization estimates that 39% of LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 17 live in states with censorship laws, compared to 26% that live in states with inclusive laws and 35% that live in states with no LGBTQ+-specific curricular statutes.
The second Trump administration has also taken extraordinary steps to prevent Americans from learning anything about LGBTQ+ history or identities.
In 2025, alone, among many other anti-LGBTQ+ actions, the administration removed all references to transgender people from the National Park Service webpage on the Stonewall National Monument; renamed the USNS Harvey Milk (named for the assassinated gay activist) after a straight person; repeatedly attempted to cut federal funding to schools with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; instructed schools operated by the Department of Defense to purge curriculum related to immigration, gender, and sexuality; and declared the federal government would no longer recognize the existence of trans people at all.
In response to Donald Trump’s executive orders, even some universities have cracked down on LGBTQ+ curricula. In September, for example, a lecturer at Texas A&M University was fired for acknowledging trans people exist. The school also recently announced it has ended its Women’s & Gender Studies program for being too “woke.”
And a Catholic college in Illinois, Benedictine University, removed pages from its website claiming to offer safe spaces for diverse communities after anti-trans groups called out the school for hosting an event to honor the Trans Day of Remembrance.
Rodríguez believes that the fact that her students create extensively researched entries that must be written in a neutral tone is especially powerful under the current climate. “It’s persuasive because the facts are on our side,” she said.
Rodríguez credits Wiki Education as an indispensable partner in the project. “They do all the trainings, they train professors, and they train students.” She has also since joined one of their boards and has served as a mentor for other professors who want to do this work.
She hopes more classrooms take up projects like hers and that more students feel empowered to engage in this kind of active learning and knowledge-sharing, which allows their work to go far beyond the classroom.
“It’s not like they’re giving me a paper that only I’m reading,” she said. “They really are writing for the world.”
Who they write for
Professor Juana Maria Rodriguez chats with a student | Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
Rodriguez acknowledges that Wikipedia is not the “be-all end-all” source of information, but that it offers a great jumping-off point for people who need to build a foundation of knowledge on a topic.
That said, millions of people worldwide rely on Wikipedia for information. Rodríguez said her students’ pages have racked up millions of views, which isn’t surprising, considering the encyclopedia behemoth’s monthly pageviews number in the billions. It is consistently ranked among the top 10 most visited websites in the world.
Many readers of the site no doubt lack access to world-class academic resources like those available in the Berkeley library for students to draw from. It is critical work, Rodríguez said, to reproduce this information in an easy-to-find, digestible manner that isn’t hidden behind a paywall.
“One of the things that I tell my students is that they’re writing for the teenager in Arkansas, and in Lagos, Nigeria,” Rodríguez said. “They’re writing for the person in Scotland who maybe just met a trans person for the first time, and they want to know more about it. They’re writing for activists. They’re writing for each other.”
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) is suing a hospital for ending its youth gender-affirming care program using a strategy that legal experts say could be a game changer for efforts to ensure trans minors maintain access to the care they need.
As Erin in the Morning reports, Bonta filed the lawsuit against Rady Children’s Hospital on Friday, just 10 days after the San Diego hospital announced that it would close its Center for Gender-Affirming Care and, beginning February 6, no longer provide medically necessary gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19.
According to the East Bay Times, in a statement following its January 20 announcement, Rady cited pressure from the Trump administration, which has threatened to block research and educational grants as well as Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement to institutions that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“Taken together, these developments affect our role and responsibilities as a provider participating in federal programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, which are essential to caring for children and families in our communities,” the statement read.
Critics say Rady’s move was premature, as at least two of the rules aimed at cutting funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors remain proposals, the East Bay Times reported. And there is no federal law banning gender-affirming care for minors, which is legal in California.
But as Erin in the Morning notes, Bonta’s strategy does not rely on state or federal civil rights law. Rather, in his complaint, Bonta argues that Rady has violated the legally binding conditions it agreed to when he approved its merger with the Children’s Hospital of Orange County in 2024.
In a January 30 press release announcing the lawsuit, Bonta’s office explained that the conditions the California AG placed on the merger “included a requirement that Rady maintain existing levels of specialty healthcare services — including gender-affirming care — through 2034.” They also required the hospital “to obtain approval from the Attorney General before it reduced or eliminated gender-affirming care.”
“Rady Children’s Health has chosen to violate its merger agreement and California law in response to the Trump administration’s illegal campaign against providers of gender-affirming care,” Bonta said in a January 30 statement. “Rady flagrantly disregarded its legal obligations by unilaterally deciding to preemptively comply with the administration’s demands and cease medically necessary care for roughly 1,450 patients. We will not allow Rady to violate its obligations to its patients and the State. We will fight to uphold the law and ensure Californians can access gender-affirming care without facing unfair roadblocks.”
As attorney and trans advocate Rachel See told Erin in the Morning, Bonta’s decision to focus his lawsuit exclusively around Rady’s alleged breach of the merger’s conditions is strategic, allowing him to avoid questions about federal nondiscrimination or constitutional claims, and remain in state court.
“It doesn’t matter why Rady chose to preemptively comply with demands it expects to receive from the federal government. According to the AG, the only thing that matters is that they violated the merger conditions,” See explained. “There’s no federal question and no easy way for the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to interfere.”
While See noted that this particular lawsuit could only have been brought “under California law, because of the California AG’s unique power to approve mergers between California nonprofit hospitals,” Bonta’s strategy could nonetheless provide attorneys general in other states in their efforts to combat the administration’s attacks on gender-affirming care for minors.
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Republicans held a hearing on Wednesday about Europe’s free speech laws, featuring trans-bashing failed Irish TV writer Graham Linehan whining about how he can’t get work in the U.K. anymore.
It was a massive waste of time and a distraction, their Democratic colleagues said, from the real work of the House Judiciary Committee: oversight of the Department of Homeland Security as they lay siege in Minnesota.
“The Republican Majority wants to change the subject and to distract from its utter failure to perform oversight over the [administration’s] lawless and deadly policies,” said committee member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Linehan appeared with an operative for the far-right anti-trans legal group Alliance Defending Freedom International, along with a conservative member of the Finnish parliament, for the hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation: Part II.”
Linehan blurted in his testimony about how “gender ideology and free speech cannot coexist,” with complaints that his own anti-trans ideology has lost him fans and work. He blamed it on the U.K. government.
“The government’s hands stay clean. The censorship happens. The state didn’t do it,” he rattled on.
“Why isn’t Republican leadership of this Committee and Congress hauling the Department of Homeland Security and Kristi Noem before this Committee? Why aren’t they conducting an investigation into the killing of American citizens and the use of excessive force by ICE and CPB? Why aren’t they doing their jobs to demand accountability? Americans are outraged. I don’t understand why my Republican colleagues are not,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA),
She added: “The most serious threat to American civil rights and civil liberties is coming from our own government.”
Out committee member Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) also spent time redirecting the hearing’s focus to ICE and threats to Americans’ constitutional rights.
“I’ve spent time both in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and I’ve spent time in Chicago, and what we are seeing on the ground is absolutely terrifying,” Balint said. “You have members of the clergy being pepper balled in the head while they are peacefully praying and protesting in front of immigration facilities. You have members of the press being arrested, other members of the press being roughed up even after they are identifying themselves as members of the press. You have election offices being raided. You have Americans’ First Amendment, Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights being eroded. You have citizens being arrested.
“And even before the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, we had documented over 170 American citizens who had been arrested and detained by ICE and Border Patrol, and it’s gotten worse since then.”
Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) agreed.
“I know for a fact that these situations are what we should be talking about, not Europe, our own,” she said. “Due process rights right here in America are being violated.”
Democrats managed to call one witness to address what they called our own government’s “lawless onslaught on our First Amendment rights”: Deepinder Mayell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.
“Mr. Mayell, can you talk about what you take away from the things that have mobilized people in Minneapolis, like we haven’t seen anywhere else in the country? What’s at the heart of it?” asked Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL).
Mayell explained: “What I can say is that the people of Minnesota have been disrupted, are shocked, are in a state of grief. They are opposing what they’re seeing as unlawful, unconstitutional, un-American activity on their streets.”
“This is not normal law enforcement,” he said. “This is not normal, what is happening in Minnesota. And it should alarm everybody.”
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Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) called rapper Nicki Minaj a “sellout” on Tuesday while criticizing her embrace of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.
“We don’t mess with Nicki,” Crockett replied when asked by a TMZ journalist what she thought of the rapper. “I have always loved [rapper] Cardi [B.] more, okay? And clearly, my instincts were right to love on Cardi more than Nicki.”
When asked about her distaste for Minaj, Crockett explained, “I just don’t do sell-outs, especially in this moment, right? Like things are too serious, there are too many people that are being harmed, and especially with her being an immigrant, then deciding to go and cozy up to this administration that is specifically putting targets on the backs of immigrants and anyone who stands with them — even if they’re U.S citizens, they can catch a bullet — that is wrong. I don’t even understand how you can play with it and pretend like it’s anything but wrong.”
Crockett’s reference to U.S. citizens catching a bullet likely alluded to queer mother of three Renee Good and Veterans Affairs’ ICU nurse Alex Pretti, both of whom were killed by federal immigration enforcement officers last month in Minneapolis. Trump administration officials referred to both as domestic terrorists and blamed them for their own deaths.
Under Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have infiltrated blue state cities with large immigrant and non-white populations. An estimated 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, according to The Guardian. Of the estimated 59,762 people in ICE custody as of last November, 16,523 had no criminal record — roughly 28%. Federal immigration agents have ignored or denied claims of citizenship and refused to release Americans who have valid proof of citizenship.
Crockett said she thinks Minaj has embraced Trump for “papers,” perhaps a reference to immigration paperwork. Crockett alluded to the fact that Minaj is an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago at the age of five. Crockett also alluded to the fact that Minaj’s husband is a registered sex offender.
“I don’t know if [she’s cozying up to Trump] because she looking for some papers for some people, or if she’s looking for them other papers, because, you know, I hear that she got family members that’s got a little, you know, a few little issues, right? And so maybe she needs them other papers because he love to hand those out, usually at a cost, right?”
“But going after people like Don Lemon, who I love dearly, just wrong, like, she’s just on the wrong side of history. So I hope that people remember all of this when she comes back and she’s broke and she’s begging for money and support, because something tells me MAGA ain’t gonna do it,” Crockett added, alluding to the Trump administration’s recent arrest of gay journalist Don Lemon for broadcasting an anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Minaj has called him anti-gay slurs.
Crockett questioned whether other music fans would “want to continue to support or elevate a person’s platform who’s then going to turn around and do things that are demeaning to us as a society.”
When the TMZ interviewer then asked Crockett if she was surprised that the conservative organization Turning Point USA didn’t include Minaj in its alternative Super Bowl halftime show, Crockett replied, “She may now understand her place as it relates to MAGA, but maybe she won’t. Who knows?” Turning Point USA’s halftime show features only white country-rock musicians.
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Connexion
