Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03891-yDespite advances, AI models continue to be geared towards the needs of English-speaking people in high-income countries.

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03778-yThe European country has long been recognized as a model of efficiency and innovation heres how its research ecosystem is organized.

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09955-3Author Correction: Inhibiting membrane rupture with NINJ1 antibodies limits tissue injury

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09947-3Author Correction: Matrix viscoelasticity promotes liver cancer progression in the pre-cirrhotic liver

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09953-5Author Correction: Nasal delivery of an IgM offers broad protection from SARS-CoV-2 variants

Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II, a two-time first-team All-Pro and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, said he feels a little "anxious," but is more than ready to return to the lineup for Sunday's contest against the Washington Commanders.

After missing the past two games while in concussion protocol, rookie Jaxson Dart has reclaimed his spot as the Giants' QB1 and will return to face the Patriots on Monday night.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold wasn't in an overly reflective mood while answering questions about facing his former team but expressed gratitude for his resurgent season in Minnesota.

Stanford hired Tavita Pritchard as the school's next head coach, the school announced Friday.

Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II, a two-time first-team All Pro and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, said he feels a little "anxious," but is more than ready to return to the lineup for Sunday's contest against the Washington Commanders.

It was Friday, June 6, and the rent was due. As soon as she finished an errand, Imelda Carreto planned on joining her family as they gathered scrap metal to earn a little extra cash. Her fianc, Julio Matias, and 15-year-old nephew, Carlos, had set out early, hitching a trailer to the back of their beat-up gray truck.Shortly after 8 a.m., Carretos phone rang. It was Carlos, telling her an officer with the Florida Highway Patrol had pulled over the truck on Interstate 4 near Tampa. The stated reason: cracks in their windshield. But Carreto was worried. She knew Florida police were collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Her fianc was undocumented. She says she rushed to the scene and made it there just before the immigration officers.As she feared, Matias had been detained. But to her surprise, so had Carlos. He was just a kid. (ProPublica is only identifying Carlos by his first name because he is a minor.) Carlos was in high school. Hed been living in the United States for over two years and was working toward applying for legal status to stay long term. The government had given her, a legal resident, custody of him. Now he was in handcuffs. Why would they take him too?Carreto didnt carry any proof that she had custody of the boy. She had left it in another car in her rush. She recalls officers saying her nephew would likely be released to her in a few days once she presented the proper documents. Before they drove him away, Carlos started to tear up. Carreto told him, Dont cry. I dont know how, but Ill get you back. Understand?A cracked windshield, a waiting officer, a forgotten document: The new family separations often start in the most mundane ways.Seven years ago, during the first administration of President Donald Trump, children were taken from their families the moment they crossed the border into the United States. Under a policy of zero tolerance for illegal crossing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained adults while children were sent into the federal shelter system. The aim: to deter other families from following. But after widespread public outcry and a lawsuit, the administration ended it.Today, family separations are back, only now they are happening all across the country. The lawsuit against the zero tolerance policy resulted in a 2023 settlement that limits separations at the border, but it does not address those that occur inside the country after encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Advocates fear the administration is conducting the new separations for the same reasons as before: to deter new immigrants from coming and to terrify those who are here into leaving.Since the start of this year, some 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data. That figure, which has not been previously reported, is already higher than the tally for the previous four years combined. And it is the highest number since recordkeeping began a decade ago.ProPublica pieced together additional information for around 400 children sent to shelters by examining state and federal records and conducting dozens of interviews with current and former government officials, advocates, attorneys and immigrant families.Around 160 of the cases that we learned about involved child welfare concerns, which current and former officials say is typical of the children ICE has sent to shelters in the past. These cases include instances of kids who were encountered alone inside the country or were considered potential victims of domestic abuse or trafficking, or instances where minors or the adults they were with had been accused of committing a crime.But in a majority of the cases we examined, kids ended up in shelters in ways government officials say they never would have in the past: after routine immigration court hearings or appointments, or because they were at a home or a business when immigration authorities showed up to arrest someone else.In South Carolina, a Colombian family of five went to a government office for a fingerprinting appointment, only to have the parents detained while the children ages 5, 11 and 15 were sent into the shelter system for four months. In South Florida, a 17-year-old from Guatemala was taken into custody because officers couldnt make contact with his dad after a traffic stop; his dad is deaf. In Maryland, a 17-year-old from Mexico ended up in a shelter after making a wrong turn onto military property.In around 150 cases, children were taken into federal custody after traffic stops. The trend is especially noticeable in states like Florida, where thousands of state and local police, including highway patrol, have been deputized to enforce immigration laws.Whats happening to kids now is like many small zero tolerances, said Marion Mickey Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This and other changes affecting immigrant children are adding up to a huge trauma.Most of the cases we found involve teenagers, and many of them had been in the United States for years. In those cases, being sent to a shelter can mean separation not only from their families but from schools, friends, churches, doctors and daily routines.Once children are in shelters, the government is making it harder and harder for relatives or other adults who act as sponsors to get them back. The average length of stay has grown to nearly six months, up from one month during the presidency of Joe Biden, public data shows.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement that the Biden administration released immigrant kids to sponsors too quickly and without proper vetting, sometimes into unsafe situations. The Trump Administration is ensuring that unaccompanied minors do not fall victim to the same dangerous conditions, Jackson said.Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, speaking for ICE, said the agency does not separate families and instead offers parents the choice to have their children deported with them or to leave the children in the care of another safe adult, consistent with past practices.Asked about Carlos detention in Florida, McLaughlin said that traffic stops by officers trained to partner with ICE have prevented abuse of immigrant children and resulted in arrests of human traffickers, abusers, and other criminals.ProPublica found no evidence of Carreto or Matias, her fianc, being accused or convicted of serious crimes. Carreto had been found guilty of driving without a license at least twice and had gotten a speeding ticket. Matias pleaded guilty to a 2011 taillight infraction. He now has an ongoing case for driving without a license from the traffic stop with Carlos, and he has been returned to Guatemala.Shelter Network Turned on Its HeadWhat is happening now is not what the system was set up for.The nations network of roughly 170 federal shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children is run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The office is tasked with temporarily housing vulnerable children who cross the border alone, holding them in the least restrictive setting possible until they can be released to a sponsor in the United States. Typically that means placing kids with a parent or other family member. The office finds and vets the sponsors and is required to release children to them without delay. Once kids are out, they can apply to remain here permanently.Under Biden, when border crossings surged to record highs, around 470,000 children were released to sponsors after going through the shelter system. Republicans said the releases incentivized smugglers to endanger kids on the long journey north and encouraged parents to send their children across the border alone.The White House called the previous administrations sponsor-vetting process abysmal, and said that many records pertaining to minors released under Biden were either fraudulent or never existed to begin with.Biden officials deny these claims. But some kids have indeed ended up working in dangerous jobs.The Trump administration has placed former ICE officials in charge of the refugee resettlement office and has made it a priority to locate children who were released from custody in previous years. To facilitate the effort, ICE plans to open a national, 24-hour call center meant to help state and local officials find them. The government says it says it has already checked on more than 24,400 children in person, and it cited more than a dozen examples of sponsors and immigrant minors arrested for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking, rape and assault. One of the cases the White House highlighted was of a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl the government says was released in 2023 to a man who falsely claimed to be her brother and allegedly went on to sexually abuse her.Under Trump, the government has introduced new vetting requirements, including expanded DNA checks, fingerprinting for everyone in the sponsors household and heightened scrutiny of family finances.In response to questions from ProPublica, the refugee resettlement office said it was legally required to care for all unaccompanied kids who came through its doors and defended the new vetting process. The enhanced sponsorship requirements of this administration help keep unaccompanied alien children safe from traffickers and other bad, dangerous people, a spokesperson said.Because so many children are now being sent into shelters in ways they hadnt been before, though, lawyers and advocates worry the administrations efforts have another motive: to more broadly target and deport immigrant kids and their families. They also say the new requirements are creating so much fear that some undocumented family members are hesitant to come forward as sponsors.Around half of the kids that ICE sent into the shelter system this year have been there before. When they arrived years ago, after crossing the border alone, they were released as soon as possible. This time, back in the system, theyre languishing.I think that theyre using a clearly vulnerable, clearly sympathetic population in a way that sends a powerful message to literally every other population, said Jen Smyers, who was an official at the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Biden administration. If theyre going to go after these kids who have protections and say we care about them, and then treat them like this, that shows everyone that no one is safe.This month, attorneys suing the government over its treatment of children in the shelter system recovered a government document being provided to unaccompanied minors who cross the border. It warns them that if they do not choose to leave the country within 72 hours they will be detained in the custody of the United States Government, for a prolonged period of time. The document also warned that if the person who sought to sponsor the minors was undocumented, they would be subject to arrest and removal or to criminal penalties for aiding your illegal entry.Customs and Border Protection told ProPublica that the document is used to ensure immigrant children understand their rights and options.There have already been cases of prospective sponsors who have shown up at government offices for in-person interviews and been detained for being in the country illegally, said Marie Silver, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.They are using the kids as bait, and then the kids are stuck, Silver said. They are creating unaccompanied children this way.Separation in the Sunshine StateIn Florida, we found two dozen kids arrested in traffic stops who went on to spend weeks or months in federal shelters. Some are still there.Gov. Ron DeSantis and the states Republican majority have spent years crafting policies that allow local police officers to seamlessly operate as federal immigration enforcers. They aim to be a model for how states can help the Trump administration reclaim Americas sovereignty.Across Florida, almost 5,000 officers even those from its Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are empowered to detain people over their immigration status and to call in federal authorities to come pick them up. ProPublica obtained state data revealing that Florida police have arrested at least 47 children on federal immigration charges since late April, with the Florida Highway Patrol leading the tally.In cases like that of Carlos, children were sent to a federal shelter despite having a parent or legal custodian caring for them. Five current and former federal officials said this could be a violation of ICEs own policy. The policy dictates that officers should let primary caregivers like Carreto take them home or find a safe place to send them. (It does not clearly require caregivers to show any documentation.) If they cant find a safe place, or if there are signs the child is in danger, officers are supposed to alert local law enforcement or child-welfare officials and wait for them to arrive.Florida has its own laws governing how state and local officers should interact with children. If a kid is found alone or in danger, state police must call a hotline run by Floridas Department of Children and Families. The call is supposed to trigger a process in which state judges review any decision to place a child in the care of someone other than their family within 24 hours.Its not clear if Florida officers are calling the state hotline when encountering immigrant children. But it is clear that this year they have often called ICE.State police contacted immigration officials directly about Carlos, Florida records show. Carlos went into federal custody without a state shelter hearing, according to his attorney, who said the same thing has happened to three other clients following traffic stops.State Rep. Lawrence McClure, the Republican who introduced legislation this January that supercharged Floridas cooperation with ICE, promised during debate on the bill that nothing would change about how the state treated immigrant children. McClure did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the transfers to ICE.Boundaries between state and federal policy are being blurred in an unprecedented way, said Bernard Perlmutter, co-director of the University of Miamis Children and Youth Law Clinic.The collaboration with local police in Florida and elsewhere comes as ICE has worked increasingly with other federal agencies that may have their own policies for handling encounters with kids.In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, DeSantis press secretary emailed a list of more than a dozen links from the video platform Rumble in which the governor speaks about immigration enforcement, writing: Governor DeSantis has made immigration enforcement a top priority to keep Florida communities safe.Other state officials, including from the Florida Highway Patrol and Department of Children and Families, either did not respond or declined our requests for comment on the states partnership with ICE and its impact on immigrant children.It was Floridas cooperation with federal authorities that landed Carlos in the federal shelter system this June his second time there.In December 2022, Carlos, then 13 years old, came to the United States from Guatemala, where his single mother made him work or beg for money, according to court records. He thought he would be better off in the U.S. with her sister, according to records provided by his attorney. He made the journey without his parents, the documents say.After he crossed near Donna, Texas, he was picked up by border agents and spent three weeks in a federal shelter before being released to his aunt. Carreto said she had no idea Carlos was making the journey until she received a 2 a.m. phone call from immigration authorities. She welcomed the boy into her sprawling Guatemalan American family and insisted that he go to school.Two and a half years into his stay with Carreto came the traffic stop.Carlos was first taken across the state to the Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit detention facility operated by the GEO Group, an ICE contractor. He was transferred later in the day to an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Tampa run by Urban Strategies, another government contractor, records show. The GEO Group declined to comment and referred ProPublica to ICE. Lisa Cummins, president of Urban Strategies, wrote in an email: We remain deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve.Carreto launched into weeks of confusing phone calls and paperwork to get her nephew back. She had to send in a 10-page application. She turned over information about her finances, her adult sons finances, her lack of criminal history. She submitted samples of her DNA. She sent photos of the smoke alarms in her house.Shortly after Carlos was detained, Carreto said, immigration officers paid an unannounced visit to her home. Her son Ereson, who is 18, says federal agents came onto the property without permission and asked if any immigrants were living there. The visit scared the family.Carretos daughters eventually managed to pinpoint Carlos location by asking him over the phone to name landmarks he could see, then searching for them on Google. In video calls home, Carreto said, Carlos was visibly sad. She said he sometimes skipped meals. Why are they keeping me here? she recalled him asking, I didnt do anything wrong.Carreto visited the offices of Homeland Security Investigations in Tampa with three of her children. She said agents asked how much she paid to have Carlos smuggled across the border and how much she was getting paid to try to get him out of detention. They threatened her with federal charges if she didnt tell the truth, she said.I told them that nobody is paying me, she said. Im doing this because hes my nephew. Hes like a son to me.Carlos was released after two and a half months.He was one of the lucky ones: His aunt was a legal resident who had custody of him, and the family had the resources and determination to fight for him.The government this year has moved to slash legal services for children and offered cash to kids who give up their cases and go home. (The Office of Refugee Resettlements statement to ProPublica said it is fully complying with a court order requiring that minors be provided with legal representation.) Attorneys who represent children said they have seen a spike in cases of self-harm and behavioral problems as kids lose hope of being released.Of the kids that ProPublica learned about, around 140 were still stuck in federal shelters as of last month. Close to 100 were ordered to be deported or had signed papers agreeing to leave the country.The post ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. Its a New Record. appeared first on ProPublica.

In recent days, five U.S. senators and two representatives requested documents from the Department of Homeland Security and a formal investigation into how a firm closely tied to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ended up receiving money from a $220 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign.The demands came in response to a ProPublica story this month that revealed that the Republican consulting firm had been secretly working on the ads, which star Noem. The company, called the Strategy Group, has long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. Its CEO is married to Noems chief spokesperson at DHS.Under Noem, DHS bypassed the normal competitive bidding process when awarding the contracts allocating the majority of the money to a mysterious Delaware LLC that was created days before the deal was finalized. The Strategy Group does not appear on public documents about the deal.The public deserves to know that government officials are not using taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves and their friends on the backs of hardworking Americans, four Senate Democrats on the homeland security committee wrote in a letter to the DHS inspector general. They called for the inspector general to investigate whether DHS officials had violated federal laws and contracting regulations designed to prevent self-dealing.The senators who signed the letter were Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Andy Kim, D-N.J. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., separately sent his own letter to the inspector general.In their own letter, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Robert Garcia the ranking members of the House homeland security and oversight committees demanded copies of all communications between Noem and her aides and anyone associated with the Strategy Group or the Delaware LLC. They wrote that they intended to investigate Noem for lining your friends pockets at the taxpayers expense.Other Democrats in Congress have also criticized Noem for the ad deal. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called for Noem to resign following the ProPublica report. This is what corruption looks like, Rep. Jasmine Crockett said at a congressional hearing. Theyre stealing money from the American peoples pockets and depositing it into their bank accounts.ProPublica found that the Strategy Groups undisclosed work for DHS included running a shoot for a recently aired ad that featured Noem on horseback at Mount Rushmore, delivering a message to immigrants. Among the firms ties to Noem: It played a central role in her last gubernatorial campaign in South Dakota, and it has worked closely with Noems top aide at DHS, Corey Lewandowski. The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by Tricia McLaughlin; McLaughlin is married to the CEO of the Strategy Group, Ben Yoho.Multiple federal contracting experts previously told ProPublica that the extensive ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.Watch the DHS Ad Filmed at Mount RushmoreAsked about the Strategy Groups work for DHS, McLaughlin previously told ProPublica, I dont know who theyre a subcontractor with, but I dont work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself. She added, We dont have visibility into why they were chosen.DHS did not address questions about the calls for an IG investigation. In a statement, the agency reiterated its response to the original story, saying that DHS does its contracting by the book and that the agency is not involved in the selection of subcontractors.A spokesperson for the DHS inspector general told ProPublica that as a matter of policy, it does not confirm or deny investigations.The Strategy Group did not respond to questions.Read MoreFirm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad ContractsThe post Lawmakers Call for Probe of How Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Got Piece of $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.

Just last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined a bipartisan chorus of governors in denouncing a Biden administration plan they said would strip states of powers guaranteed to them under federal law.The plan would have transferred Air National Guard units from six states to the U.S. Space Force, the newly created military branch, stoking concerns about federal overreach and the erosion of governors control over their own guard forces. Texas wasnt among the affected states, but Abbott made his opposition unmistakable in an open letter to the president.He called the plan an intolerable threat that would set a dangerous precedent.I strongly oppose any attempt to sideline governors when it comes to their respective National Guards, he wrote.A year later, Abbott helped Donald Trump do just that. He said that he fully authorized the presidents plan to send Texas National Guard members to Illinois and Oregon to protect federal law enforcement personnel who are executing immigration laws. Those states governors vigorously objected, saying such action was an unnecessary escalation that interfered with state sovereignty.Abbott defended the deployment on Fox News. The president, he said, has the authority to mobilize guard members to preserve public safety.President Trump and I have a good, longstanding working relationship, and there is a substantive reason behind that, Abbott said. He added that he and the president were operating very closely aligned on ensuring that our country is going to be safe.Abbott, the leader of the largest state led by Republicans, has emerged as one of Trumps most important allies as the president tests the limits of executive power. While governors often align with their parties presidents, Abbotts support for Trumps expansion of federal powers is a striking departure from his own historical and ardent defenses of state sovereignty.That, constitutional experts say, sets a risky example that may be difficult to reverse.What hes doing is short-term gain for his political positions, and Texas political positions, but not for Texas as a state moving forward, said Georgetown University Law Center professor Victoria Nourse. You might like this president, but youre not necessarily going to like what happens to Texas with the next one.There are myriad examples of Abbott bending his views on state sovereignty to accede to the wishes of the new administration, including directing state agencies to assist the administrations immigration enforcement an action that constitutional law experts said essentially deputized the Texas government into federal service as well as providing data on voters and redrawing legislative boundaries to net more GOP-friendly seats in the U.S. House.Abbotts arguments then and actions now are an example of what Jessica Bulman-Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University, calls partisan federalism, a term describing how state leaders fervor for defending their sovereignty increasingly depends on whether their party is in power in Washington. She said Abbotts support of the guard deployments is particularly alarming because it diminishes the traditional power of governors to manage law enforcement in their states.Abbott did not respond to interview requests or written questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. But Robert Henneke, general counsel for the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, and James Peinado, chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, which advocates for limited government, said they saw no contradiction between Abbotts historic defense of states authority and his support of Trumps actions. Trump is following the law, Henneke said, and the states dont have the power to block the lawful exercise of authority of the federal government.Abbotts actions, however, have drawn rebuke from fellow governors, including at least one from his own party.Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, told The New York Times that he was surprised Abbott sent Texas guard members to Illinois. We believe in the federalist system thats states rights. Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration, said Stitt, who did not respond to interview requests.Ron Beal, a retired law professor at Baylor University, said Abbotts actions not only violate the historic spirit of cooperation among states, but provide Trump cover to unlawfully interfere in state matters.Trumps reason for sending troops is clearly a total fabrication of reality and I believe a constitutional violation, Beal said. It is simply outrageous that Abbott would participate and cooperate with such activity.Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a Chicago No Kings protest against President Donald Trumps policies on Oct. 18. Jim Vondruska/ReutersShifting View of Federal PowerAbbotts devotion to state sovereignty has long been central to his political identity.In January 2016, entering his second year as governor, he published a 92-page essay defending states rights and decrying what he called the Obama administrations executive overreach. In a speech that month to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he accused President Barack Obama of bypassing Congress by enacting climate change and immigration policy through unilateral executive orders. Abbott also lambasted the Supreme Court for upholding the Affordable Care Act, arguing the justices invented a legal basis for it.State leaders were supposed to have the power and opportunity to check any attempt by federal officials to overstep their bounds, Abbott wrote. Indeed, the entire structure of the Constitution was premised on the idea that the states would be stronger than the national government.Abbott proposed the Texas Plan, a set of nine constitutional amendments that he said would restore the balance of authority between the federal government and states. Among them was one that would make clear that the president, Congress and judges have no powers beyond those expressly mentioned in the Constitution.The essay offered a well-reasoned critique of growing federal power, said Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, who has assigned it as required reading for his students.Levinson said Abbotts recent actions mark a complete reversal.He condemned presidents for overreach, particularly in executive orders, and said we had to do something to rein that in. Theres much to be said for that, but that is certainly not his view in 2025, Levinson said. Most of what Trump does is through executive order.Trump has sought to use executive orders to force changes to elections and voting. He has also pressured state leaders to make changes on his behalf, and Abbott has obliged.Over the summer, Abbott became the first governor to comply with Trumps demand that Republican-led states break from the traditional 10-year cycle of redrawing congressional districts to create more GOP-friendly seats for the 2026 midterm election.Initially sympathetic to incumbent Republican House members worries that the strategy could weaken solid GOP seats by spreading the partys voters across too many districts, Abbott ultimately called a special session of the Texas Legislature to draft new congressional boundaries.Texas lawmakers in 2003 similarly conducted a rare mid-decade redistricting, but that was not directed by then-President George W. Bush, said Karl Rove, one of Bushs senior advisers. The White House and RNC didnt provoke or lead the effort, Rove said in a text message.A governor allowing a president to influence when a state redistricts cedes the historical power of states to run their own elections, said Mimi Marziani, who teaches election law at the University of Texas.She said Trumps request for more GOP-friendly seats has everything to do with national party interests and nothing to do with state interests. And she warned that if governors give in, they will be vulnerable to future presidential meddling.Earlier this month, Trump endorsed Abbott for reelection, citing redistricting as one of the governors key accomplishments. A week later, a panel of three federal judges blocked the states newly drawn congressional map from taking effect, finding that it discriminated against voters based on race. On Tuesday, Abbott said Texas would swiftly appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.Abbotts cooperation has extended to sharing voter registration data with Washington.Texas joined more than a dozen states in turning over voter roll information to the Justice Department, despite long-standing resistance to federal oversight of state elections.The Constitution allows states to run elections, subject to oversight by Congress. But Trump sought greater control over the process, issuing an executive order in March that prioritized enforcing the federal laws that bar noncitizens from voting.Voters cast ballots at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston. Michael Stravato for the Texas TribuneTrump has repeatedly claimed that noncitizens are voting en masse to sway U.S. elections in favor of Democrats, while research has shown this not to be true.A recent voter roll audit by the Texas secretary of state, using a federal citizenship database, flagged 2,724 voters or 0.015% as potential noncitizens. Preliminary investigations by county voter registrars, however, found that some of those voters are citizens.Acting on Trumps order, the Justice Department requested from states their entire voter rolls, including dates of birth, addresses, drivers license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, according to a letter sent to Texas and obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune under public records laws.Records show that Texas provided voter roll information to the Justice Department in October.Texas secretary of state spokesperson Alicia Pierce told ProPublica and the Tribune that the secretary of state provided only the publicly available version of its voter roll, which redacts information such as drivers license and Social Security numbers.The Justice Department is suing eight states, six of which had provided or offered publicly available versions of their voter rolls because they did not include all the information the federal government sought. One such state is Pennsylvania.This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal governments role in our countrys electoral process, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, wrote to the Justice Department in August.Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre declined to comment on why the federal government had not included Texas among the states it was suing for failing to share all the information the government sought.But the same month that Texas quietly handed over the limited voter roll, Secretary of State Jane Nelson, an Abbott appointee, announced her office had finished running the full roll, along with Social Security numbers, through a federal database to check voters citizenship status.The Department of Homeland Security stores voter data uploaded by state officials, DHS records obtained by ProPublica found.Nelsons office did not answer questions about whether doing so essentially provided the federal government with even more data on Texas voters than it had initially sought.Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7. Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/ZUMA Press/ReutersIn LimboAbbott embraced Trumps deployment of Texas National Guard troops under a novel interpretation of a federal law that authorizes the mobilization of troops to quell a rebellion or threat of rebellion, or if regular forces are unable to enforce federal law. No modern president has invoked the law to assist in carrying out immigration policy.Despite Abbotts support, the 400 Texas National Guard troops mobilized by Trump are still not on the streets of Illinois or Oregon.Federal judges temporarily halted the deployments after Oregon and Illinois sued the Trump administration, arguing that its actions violate the 10th Amendment, which gives the states all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government by the Constitution.The states arguments echo those Abbott made in his 2016 essay, in which he warned that Washington too often ignored that amendment to impose its will on states. He proposed making it easier for states to sue the federal government over alleged abuses of power.The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is handling the Illinois case, had a similar take. In an Oct. 16 ruling, the court said the Texas troop mobilization was an incursion on Illinoiss sovereignty and likely a violation of the 10th Amendment.The litigation kept Texas Guard members who were deployed to the Chicago area more than a month ago in limbo, unable to carry out what Trump wanted them to but unable to leave. A U.S. Defense Department spokesperson said the 200 guard members who were training at a base in Illinois returned to Texas last week. The rest, bound for Oregon, remain at Fort Bliss in El Paso.The U.S. Supreme Court has placed the Illinois case on its emergency docket and is considering the parties written arguments. The courts pending ruling would likely apply to the Oregon case as well.Despite the uncertainty regarding the deployments legality, Trump suggested in an October speech to U.S. military members that he was prepared to send troops, including active-duty units, into more cities.Abbotts cooperation thus far will make it harder for other states to resist Trump in future deployments, said James Gardner, a constitutional law professor at the University at Buffalo. The framers of the Constitution intended for states to stand with one another to ensure officials in Washington never accumulated too much power, Gardner said.He said that while Abbott, who is seeking a record fourth term next year, would likely rediscover his passion for states rights if a Democrat were elected president, the governor may struggle to regain power he helped take away from the states.By altering the Constitutions contemplated balance of power, it makes it easier for the central government to crush dissenting states, Gardner said.The post Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Long a Defender of States Rights, Embraces Trumps Push to Expand Presidential Power appeared first on ProPublica.

One by one, the prisoners all immigrants appeared briefly over video before a special panel of the Louisiana parole board.The August hearings were unusual in a state that, under Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, has made it increasingly difficult for most prisoners to get early release.Unlike normal parole hearings, the board didnt grill the prospective parolees about their crimes ranging from car theft to vehicular homicide to gauge their remorse. Nor did it review their disciplinary records to determine if they posed a threat to public safety. And no one was present to represent or speak on behalf of their victims.In fact, most of the nine men, clad in black-and-white-striped jumpsuits or plain orange ones, did not say a word besides their names and inmate numbers. Only one was even eligible for parole.But in each case, the three-member panel voted unanimously for release after just a few minutes of consideration.Today youve been paroled, panel chair Steve Prator said at the end of every hearing, to go straight into an ICE facility for deportation from the United States.Some thanked the board. Others sat stone-faced or simply nodded.These days, a 100% grant rate is unheard of for the Louisiana Board of Parole. Where annual parole rates previously stood around 50%, in the two years since Landry became governor, less than a quarter of those eligible have been paroled.Landry, a former police officer and sheriffs deputy who served as Louisiana attorney general until 2024, has blasted early release programs as an insult to crime victims, insisting that anyone who is convicted in Louisiana should serve the entirety of their sentence. He pushed Republican lawmakers to eliminate parole entirely for those arrested after Aug. 1, 2024, and to impose strict eligibility requirements for those already in prison.But this year the same Legislature tossed all of that aside for one category of prisoner: immigrants without legal status. With mass deportations a key policy priority for President Donald Trump, Republican-led state and local governments have taken aggressive steps to deliver. In May, Landry signed an order seeking to crack down on criminal illegal aliens by granting the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections and other state agencies the authority to conduct certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement duties. In June, Louisiana lawmakers created an expedited alien removal process through the special parole panel that passed with little notice during the last legislative session.They have the ability to release a lot of people to parole, and theyre choosing to only do it for this specific group because its politically popular, said Bridget Geraghty, senior counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center, a Chicago-based legal nonprofit focused on prison reform.At least two other Republican-led states have recently put in place similar initiatives to parole and deport prisoners without legal status. South Dakota paroled 10 immigrant prisoners to be deported over the summer. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced in February that the state had identified about 525 prisoners subject to deportation.Since the Aug. 27 hearings in Louisiana, at least two of the nine men paroled have been deported, while two others from Vietnam are being held at a newly designated immigration detention facility on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to ICE. Neither ICE nor the Landry administration would answer questions about the locations of the five other parolees or whether they are being deported to their home countries of Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.On Sept. 21, ICEs regional office in New Orleans posted a photo of one of the parolees, Samuel Lara Garcia, handcuffed in front of a staircase leading to a plane. The agency identified Garcia as a citizen of Honduras.HOMICIDE DEPORTATION, the X post blared.Garcia, 36, had pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and obstruction of justice in a 2022 shooting after an argument at a Baton Rouge house party. He was sentenced to 13 years in 2024 but had served less than two years in prison before being paroled.Immigration and Customs Enforcements regional office in New Orleans posted a photo of Samuel Lara Garcia. He pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 13 years in 2024, but had served less than two years in prison before being paroled. Screenshot by Verite NewsA U.S. citizen convicted of the same crime or any crime in Louisiana today would not be eligible for release under the new parole laws championed by Landry.ICE declined an interview request with Madison Sheahan, a former Landry administration official who as deputy ICE director signed the partnership agreement between the agency and the corrections department. The Landry administration did not respond to questions about the new parole panel or the governors broader executive order, which was named Operation Geaux.One member of that task force is Keith Conley, police chief of Kenner, a New Orleans suburb and one of the first Louisiana cities to formally partner with federal immigration authorities during Trumps second term. He praised the legislation that created the deportation panel in a recent interview. Paroling and deporting prisoners who are illegally in the United States frees up jail space and saves tax dollars, Conley said, so it just seems like a win, win.Under the new law, the deportation panel operates unbound by the restrictions and responsibilities placed on the regular parole process. A parole board is normally tasked with deciding whether prisoners are ready for release based on a number of factors including their behavior behind bars, efforts to rehabilitate, whether they pose a risk to the public and victims opinions.During the August hearings, however, the board was not required to abide by the eligibility restrictions imposed by the Legislature last year, including the requirement that prisoners have clean disciplinary records for at least three years and low-risk scores as determined by an algorithm.Parole granted for the purpose of deportation is fundamentally different from discretionary parole granted to individuals who have demonstrated readiness for community supervision, Francis Abbott, executive director of the parole board, told Verite News and ProPublica. In these cases, the individuals are present in the United States unlawfully and have been convicted of criminal offenses.To be eligible to appear before the new panel, prisoners must have a federal deportation notice and not have been convicted of a sex offense or a violent crime that carries a sentence of more than 10 years. (Louisiana law does not consider negligent homicide to be a violent crime.)Christopher Walters, deputy executive counsel with the Landry administration, said at a May legislative hearing that the state has identified about 390 prisoners who might be eligible to be paroled and deported. The corrections department would not verify or update that number.Its an ongoing process to determine eligibility for this specific legislation, Derrick Ellis, the departments deputy secretary, said in a recent interview.There are no more hearings scheduled for the remainder of the year, according to the parole board.Unlike typical parolees, who are required to check in regularly with their parole officers and prohibited from unauthorized travel, those paroled to be deported are not placed under any supervision. Once deported, they are released with one stipulation: Do not return to the United States.Louisiana law says those who do return will be forced to serve the remainder of their sentences. But that may not be enough of a deterrent. Margaret Hay, first assistant district attorney with the Jefferson Parish District Attorneys Office, which prosecuted one of the deported men, said prosecutors are concerned parolees convicted of violent crimes may, very quickly, just be right back in this country.Theres no guarantee that our border will remain as secure as I believe that it might be right now, said Hay, who nevertheless said she supports the initiative.ProPublica and Verite News contacted the embassies and consulates for Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Vietnam to learn how those countries manage the repatriation of deportees whose U.S. prison sentences were cut short. None responded to multiple phone calls and emails.Another issue at play is that Louisiana law requires the parole committee to notify victims about upcoming parole hearings, provided they are registered with the Louisiana Victim Outreach Program, a state initiative that provides support services. Many victims of crime, especially those who are undocumented, fail to register for or are unaware of the state program. The parole board said there were no registered victims in the nine cases that appeared before the deportation panel in August.Several local prosecutors said they tried reaching the families of the six victims who had been killed by four of the paroled men, three of whom were charged with vehicular homicide, but had trouble making contact. ProPublica and Verite News could not reach any of the victims or family members of deceased victims in the cases involving the nine men.Landry, a Trump ally, has long been an immigration hard-liner. During his eight years as attorney general, which began a year before Trumps first term as president, Louisianas capacity for detaining immigrants expanded from two facilities in 2016 to eight. That positioned the state to become a key partner in Trumps mass deportation agenda during his second presidency.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, left, tour a facility to house immigration detainees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in September. Gerald Herbert/APIn September, Landry and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem unveiled a ninth immigration detention facility, known as the Louisiana Lockup, located in the former solitary confinement wing of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. That is where Hoang Huy Pham, one of the nine men paroled in August, is being held as he awaits deportation to Vietnam, the country his family said he fled as a child refugee during the Vietnam War.Phams daughter Theresa, who asked to be referred to by only her first name because she works for the federal government and fears retaliation, said her father called her in June to tell her he was going to be paroled at the end of August after spending 20 years in prison for a long history of car theft. He told her he would live in a halfway house before rejoining the family in Baton Rouge, Theresa recalled. She said her elderly grandfather Phams father was looking forward to him finally getting out of prison to help with his care.Then in September, Theresa received another call from her father. This time, he told her he had been transferred to Angola to await deportation. That five-minute call was the last time Theresa said she heard from him.You finally got out, but youre going somewhere else where youre not supposed to be, Theresa said. Its a false hope.Hervin Pineda was the only prisoner to tell the parole board in August that he wanted to be deported back home. He wished to return to Nicaragua to be with his ailing, elderly mother in her final days, he told the board through an interpreter.Pineda, who had previously been deported while on probation, had served less than a year of a seven-year sentence on charges of cocaine possession.Nevertheless, the board granted his request.Youre a serious dope dealer, Prator, the panel chair, told him. We dont want you back.ICE took him into federal custody that day and deported him to Nicaragua on Sept. 12.The post Louisiana Made It Nearly Impossible to Get Parole. Now Its Releasing Prisoners to Deport Them. appeared first on ProPublica.

Our investigation of a little-known church community in northeastern Minnesota started with something that has become depressingly familiar: child sex abuse.ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune found that some members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community in Duluth enabled Clint Massie, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young girls. Massie is currently in prison in Faribault, Minnesota.The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church which has no affiliation with mainstream Lutheran denominations and is known as the OALC is an insular community with many old-world traditions. There is no official count, but one academic study estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the United States.We examined hundreds of pages of criminal records, conducted more than a dozen interviews with alleged victims across the country, reviewed video and audio of police interviews with Massie, victims and church leaders, and attended a service at the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth.Read MoreYoung Girls Were Sexually Abused by a Church Member. They Were Told to Forgive and Forget.Daryl Bruckelmyer, an OALC preacher, declined to comment or answer a detailed list of questions for this story. But in a 2023 interview with a St. Louis County detective, he acknowledged knowing about Massies sexual abuse. He said at the time that it was up to victims to report the crimes to police, a clear misreading of the law for mandated reporters doctors, teachers and others who are required to report crimes against children.We dont protect either one, Bruckelmyer said of sexual abusers and their victims.You can read the investigation here, but here are five takeaways from our reporting:Church leaders knew about the abuse: Leaders of Bruckelmyers church didnt report Massie to police though they knew hed sexually abused girls for years and Bruckelmyer had been told by police that reporting it was their duty. It was an open secret in the congregation: Mothers warned their children to stay away from Massie, victims said. Church leaders also sent Massie to a therapist who specialized in sex offender treatment. In December 2024, Massie pleaded guilty to four felony counts of sexual conduct with a victim under the age of 13. In March, a judge sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in prison.Victims were told to forgive and forget: Church leaders held meetings where children were told to forgive the man who sexually abused them and forget the abuse. If they spoke of it, the sin would be theirs. The meetings, described by victims to the police and confirmed through our reporting, ended in one case with a church leader allowing Massie to hug the victim. An internal church document also outlines guidelines for handling abuse and suggests that, when appropriate, both parties be brought together for a discussion.Missed opportunities to intervene: Prosecutors had at least one opportunity to intervene but hoped educating church leaders about their duties would encourage them to cooperate with authorities. Our reporting found that church leaders did not report what they learned about Massie despite a state law requiring clergy and others to share the information with law enforcement. According to law enforcement notes, Bruckelmyer told investigators that they encourage abuse victims to go to police, but that they believed it was on [victims] to do that.John Hiivala, a spokesperson for the Woodland Park Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth, said that the church has fully complied with the law in the referenced case, and its a matter of legal record.Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and crisis manager for the church, said its preachers are unpaid and therefore might not be legally required to report sexual abuse of children. Asked if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters under Minnesota law, Lowe would only say that the language of the statute is unclear.A small but rapidly growing church: OALC is a conservative Christian revival movement that came to the U.S. with 19th-century settlers from Norway, Finland and Sweden. It is not affiliated with any mainstream Lutheran denominations. Only men hold leadership positions. The church is rapidly growing, and its emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Washington state and Duluth. Members attempt to live a life as modest and simple as Jesus. This is why they do not dance, listen to music or watch movies, according to former members. In the OALC, they said, forgiveness is one of the most important acts one can perform.Victims filed lawsuits: Since Massies sentencing, two of his alleged victims have filed lawsuits against him, their church in South Dakota and the OALC. They have retained the same lawyer who represented some of the victims in the Jeffrey Epstein case.In a letter written from prison that was filed in court, Massie denied the abuse allegations in the lawsuits. He did not respond to interview requests. The OALC, in a motion to dismiss both lawsuits, wrote that while OALC-America is mindful and sympathetic to Plaintiff for the abuse Plaintiff alleges occurred by Massie, such empathy does not take away from the plain fact that this Court does not have personal jurisdiction over OALC-America.The post 5 Takeaways From Our Investigation Into How Leaders of a Minnesota Church Community Enabled a Child Abuser appeared first on ProPublica.

President Trump said he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernndez, who prosecutors said had received millions in bribes and had partnered with cocaine traffickers as Hondurass president. He is serving 45 years in prison.

They discussed a possible meeting between the two of them, but nothing has been scheduled, and the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela.

Residents of Wang Fuk Court apartments had raised concerns about flammable foam panels and scaffold netting, but the government did not take decisive action.

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who died on Thursday, was not initially excited to go to Washington, but had grown to enjoy the city. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe remained in critical condition on Friday.

The chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was seen as the second-most powerful person in Ukraine. He was dismissed on Friday.

The post Sweet Potato Dish Stopped Being Healthy 5 Ingredients Ago appeared first on The Onion.

KNOXVILLE, TNIn a development her family began referringto as a stroke of luck, local 81-year-old Gloria Martin reportedly died Thursday before her granddaughter arrived to Thanksgiving dinner with her girlfriend. Oh, thank Godproblem solved, everybody, said Frank Martin, grandson of the deceased, who reportedly breathed a sigh of relief along with his cousins, aunts, uncles, and parents after a morning spent imagining the various horrified reactions the family matriarch might have when his sister and her same-sex, live-in partner walked through the door. That was going to be stressful, so now it feels like a gigantic weight has been lifted. We honestly couldnt have asked for better timing. Grandma had just finished making her famous stuffing, which we still get to eat. And my sister was delayed by traffic, so no one has to try to explain what bisexuality is to a Catholic octogenarian. Win-win for everybody, really. Martin went on to call his grandmothers passing a Thanksgiving miracle after seeing that his sister had also shaved the side of her head.The post Grandma Thankfully Dies Before Sisters Girlfriend Arrives appeared first on The Onion.

Vince Offer, the once-prominent infomercial pitchman better known as the ShamWow guy, has filed to run as a Republican in Texass 31st congressional district, claiming he wants to destroy wokeism in Congress and make America happy. What do you think?How absorbent are his opponents towels?Mario Lobo, Replica AppraiserHell poll well with the sizable bloc of voters who are overwhelmed by spills.Penny Norfolk, Doll ClothierAnyone with a proven track record of battering women has my vote.Troy Powell, Cellophane ExpertThe post ShamWow Guy Running For Congress appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTONResponding to concerns about high grocery prices ahead of the holiday, President Donald Trump held a press conference Wednesday to tout the affordability of hay-based Thanksgiving dishes. Im doing a great job on the economy and bringing the price of Thanksgiving dinners way down by encouraging Americans to replace costly ingredients with straw, said Trump, adding that the low-cost, grass-based livestock feed could be shaped into the form of a roasted bird or baked into casseroles and pies. Thanksgiving meal prices are down 33% compared to what they were under Biden, and now you can stay full by chewing on the hay for hours and hours. Americans consuming dried grass out of necessity is just another sign that the United States has the strongest economy in the history of the worldhorses eat this stuff, and look how strong those guys are. I promised to lower cud prices for Americans, and by God have I delivered. Bet you cant eat just one bail! Trump then asked Vice President JD Vance to show Americans that hay was delicious by eating some off the floor for the camera.The post White House Touts Affordability Of Hay-Based Thanksgiving Dishes appeared first on The Onion.

INDIANAPOLISIn an effort to get hands-on experience stigmatizing patients bodies in a safe environment, Indiana University medical student Dylan Loera confirmed Wednesday that she was practicing fat shaming on a cadaver. At first it felt strange, but the opportunity to practice saying, Have you tried losing a few pounds? in the flesh is so different than just shaking your head at a picture in a textbook, said the first-year student, adding that she felt humbled by the generosity of the deceased individual who donated their body so she could roll her eyes a few times and poke their stomach folds with an audible oof. After so many hours sitting in lectures, it was nice to finally put on my scrubs and reduce a patients value as a human being by criticizing their weight. It almost feels like Im right there in an actual medical practice, dismissing a fat patients every concern while suppressing my laughter. Loera reportedly received a perfect score on her examination after informing a cadaver with cancer symptoms that there was nothing she could do for them if they werent willing to help themselves.The post Medical Student Practices Fat Shaming On Cadaver appeared first on The Onion.

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This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.JOSEPH: This was a pretty big week for impact at 404 Media. Sams piece on an exposed AI porn platform ended up with the company closing off those exposed images. Our months-long reporting and pressure from lawmakers led to the closure of the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP), in which a company owned by the U.S.s major airlines sold flyers data to the government for warrantless surveillance.For the quick bit of context I have typed many, many times this year: that company is Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and is owned by United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada. ARC gets data, including a travelers name, credit card used, where theyre flying to and from, whenever someone books a flight with one of more than 10,000 travel agencies. Think Expedia, especially. ARC then sells access to that data to a slew of government agencies, including ICE, the FBI, the SEC, the State Department, ATF, and more.

Police departments and officials from Border Patrol used Flocks automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to monitor protests hundreds of times around the country during the last year, including No Kings protests in June and October, according to data obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).The data provides the clearest picture yet of how cops widely use Flock to monitor protesters. In June, 404 Media reported cops in California used Flock to track what it described as an immigration protest. The new data shows more than 50 federal, state, and local law enforcement ran hundreds of searches in connection with protest activity, according to the EFF.

Elon Musk is a better role model than Jesus, better at conquering Europe than Hitler, the greatest blowjob giver of all time, should have been selected before Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft, is a better pitcher than Randy Johnson, has the potential to drink piss better than any human in history, and is a better porn star than Riley Reid, according to Grok, Xs sycophantic AI chatbot that has seemingly been reprogrammed to treat Musk like a god.Grok has been tweaked sometime in the last several days and will now choose Musk as being superior to the entire rest of humanity at any given task. The change is somewhat reminiscent of Groks MechaHitler debacle. It is, for the moment, something that is pretty funny and which people on various social media platforms are dunking on Musk and Grok for, but its also an example of how big tech companies, like X, are regularly putting their thumbs on the scales of their AI chatbots to distort reality and to obtain their desired outcome.

The federal government claims that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a system crash deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility.People detained at ICEs Broadview Detention Center in suburban Chicago sued the government on October 30; according to their lawyers and the government, nearly two weeks of footage that could show how they were treated was lost in a system crash that happened on October 31.The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed, Alec Solotorovsky, one of the lawyers representing people detained at the facility, said in a hearing about the footage on Thursday that 404 Media attended via phone. That period we think is going to be critical [] because thats the period right before the lawsuit was filed.Earlier this week, we reported on the fact that the footage, from October 20 to October 30, had been irretrievably destroyed. At a hearing Thursday, we learned more about what was lost and the apparent circumstances of the deletion. According to lawyers representing people detained at the facility, it is unclear whether the government is even trying to recover the footage; government lawyers, meanwhile, said we dont have the resources to continue preserving surveillance footage from the facility and suggested that immigrants detained at the facility (or their lawyers) could provide endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.It should be noted that ICE and Border Patrol agents continued to be paid during the government shutdown, that Trumps Big Beautiful Bill provided $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement and border protection, which included tens of billions of dollars in funding for detention centers.People detained at the facility are suing the government over alleged horrific treatment and living conditions at the detention center, which has become a site of mass protest against the Trump administrations mass deportation campaign.Solotorovsky said that the footage the government has offered is from between September 28 and October 19, and from between October 31 and November 7. Government lawyers have said they are prepared to provide footage from five cameras from those time periods; Solotorovsky said the plaintiffs attorneys believe there are 63 surveillance cameras total at the facility. He added that over the last few weeks the plaintiffs legal team has been trying to work with the government to figure out if the footage can be recovered but that it is unclear who is doing this work on the governments side. He said they were referred to a company called Five by Five Management, that appears to be based out of a house, has supposedly been retained by the government.We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist, Solotorovsky said. He added that the government specialist they spoke to didnt really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasnt able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data. He said that the government eventually put him in touch with a person who ostensibly was involved in those events [attempting to recover the data], and it was kind of a no-name LLC called Five by Five Management that appears to be based out of a house in Carol Stream. We were told they were on site and involved with the system when the October 20 to 30 data was lost, but nobody has told us that Five By Five Management or anyone else has been trying to recover the data, and also very importantly things like system logs, administrator logs, event logs, data in the system that may show changes to settings or configurations or deletion events or people accessing the system at important times.Five by Five Management could not be reached for comment.Solotorovsky said those logs are going to be critical for determining whether the loss was intentional. Were deeply concerned that nobody is trying to recover the data, and nobody is trying to preserve the data that were going to need for this case going forward.Jana Brady, an assistant US attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security in the case, did not have much information about what had happened to the footage, and said she was trying to get in touch with contractors the government had hired. She also said the government should not be forced to retain surveillance footage from every camera at the facility and that the we [the federal government] dont have the resources to save all of the video footage.We need to keep in mind proportionality. It took a huge effort to download and save and produce the video footage that we are producing and to say that we have to produce and preserve video footage indefinitely for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, indefinitely, which is what theyre asking, we dont have the resources to do that, Brady said. we don't have the resources to save all of the video footage 24/7 for 65 cameras for basically the end of time.She added that the government would be amenable to saving all footage if the plaintiffs have endless hard drives that we could save things to, because again we dont have the resources to do what the court is ordering us to do. But if they have endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.Magistrate Judge Laura McNally said they arent being preserved from now until the end of time, theyre being preserved for now, and said Im guessing the federal government has more resources than the plaintiffs here and, Ill just leave it at that.When McNally asked if the footage was gone and not recoverable, Brady said thats what Ive been told.Ive asked for the name and phone number for the person that is most knowledgeable from the vendor [attempting to recover] the footage, and if I need to depose them to confirm this, I can do this, she said. But I have been told that its not recoverable, that the system crashed.Plaintiffs in the case say they are being held in inhumane conditions. The complaint describes a facility where detainees are confined at Broadview inside overcrowded holding cells containing dozens of people at a time. People are forced to attempt to sleep for days or sometimes weeks on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are denied sufficient food and water [] the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable [] the physical conditions are filthy, with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor [] federal officers who patrol Broadview under Defendants authority are abusive and cruel. Putative class members are routinely degraded, mistreated, and humiliated by these officers.

OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platforms CEO recently announced.As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesnt say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries criminal records will be checked.OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment. I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US, Blair wrote. Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. Its collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when theyre not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meetespecially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries.Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life, performer GoAskAlex, whos on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. If they're trying to transition to online work, they wont be able to do that anymore, they said. And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, Oh, wow, this is really bad.Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks.How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for EveryoneInnocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy.404 MediaEmanuel MaibergSex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture, Alex said. Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partnerswhich primarily include studiosnext year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN.Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacitysimilarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with childrenso if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense? she said. I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification thats swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. SouthAs of today, three more states join the list of 17 that cant access Pornhub because of age verification laws.404 MediaSamantha ColeIts dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible, Starling said. It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, its difficult to just go to another platform if creators dont want to be subjected to background checks. We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, were kind of screwed, right?Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.

Subscribe nowLast night, Zohran Mamdani made history as the first Muslim and person of South Asian descent to become New York Citys mayor. At 34 years old, hes also the citys youngest mayor in over a century.Mamdani ran a next-generation campaign, one that masterfully utilized new media with a well-thought-out TikTok strategy and partnerships with famous influencers.He galvanized New Yorkers to the polls in record numbers, with over 2 million people turning out in part because he relentlessly campaigned on affordability. He promised free buses, free childcare and a rent freeze for stabilized units.While Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries remain tepid on Mamdani and his strategy, some in the party are starting to sing a different tune. Former president Barack Obama reportedly called Mamdani over the weekend, saying [his] campaign has been impressive to watch and offering to be a sounding board for the future. Even Jerry Nadler, who opposed Mamdani in the primary, said that voters in New York City demanded change and, with Zohrans triumph, we have a direct repudiation of Donald Trumps politics of tax cuts and authoritarianism.What hasnt made as many headlines is that Mamdani didnt compromise or stay silent in his support for queer and trans New Yorkers. Egged on by pundits and think tanks who seem convinced that full-throated support for trans rights have been a liability for Democrats, major figures like Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg and Rahm Emanuel have signaled a turnaround on certain trans issues while others are quieter than ever.But Mamdani did not acquiesce. Rather, he demonstrated his allyship loudly and proudly throughout the campaign.In February, he showed up at Union Square to protest an executive order threatening to pull funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for trans youth, saying, You need not even know a trans New Yorker to stand up for trans New Yorkers. This is a trial of all of us to see who we are willing to give up. And our answer is no one. On Oct. 11, he published an ad relaying the story of foundational trans activist Sylvia Rivera while promising to declare New York an LGBTQ sanctuary city and create an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs. And three days before the election, he showed up at multiple queer bars, including Bushwicks Mood Ring, to rally patrons.The takeaway for me is that two things can be true: Democrats can have strong platforms that are focused and nuanced when it comes to economic policy. At the same time, they dont have to ditch identity politics or throw marginalized groups under the bus. Theres evidence that shows the reason Democrats lost in November was less about their commitment to LGBTQ rights and more about the fact that they didnt have a clear message on the issues Americans care the most about: Analysts noted that Kamala Harris economic policies were often tepid and unconvincing, and she lost in states that passed progressive economic policies like an increased minimum wage and paid sick leavepolicies her campaign hadnt focused on in their messaging.I believe the Mamdani feverwhich many are describing as reminiscent to when Obama ran in 2008is twofold: Not only did he give a clear platform that would help New Yorkers care for their families and make life more affordable, but he did it while advocating to leave nobodyincluding the most marginalized in our societybehind.Subscribe nowI was on Anne-Marie Zanzals podcast Coming Out & Beyond | LGBTQIA+ Stories. I had the honor of speaking about the work we are doing here at Uncloseted and about how representations of LGBTQ characters on Degrassi gave me the courage to come out at 16 years old (thank you Adam Ruggiero, who played Marco!). We are on Facebook and we are growing! Help us reach our goal of 5,000 followers by the end of the year by giving us a follow. And tell your friends!Follow us on FacebookZohran Mamdani, LGBTQ+ ally, wins New York City mayoral election and makes history (The Advocate)Mamdani, a self-described Democratic socialist and queer ally, will be New York Citys next mayor.LGBTQ+ ally Abigail Spanberger trounces anti-trans Republican to win Virginia governors race (The Advocate)Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and three-term Democratic congresswoman, has won Virginias governors race, handily defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in a decisive victory that returns the states executive mansion to Democratic control. She will be the 75th governor of the state and the first woman.Rep. Mikie Sherrill wins N.J. governor in Tuesdays second victory for Democrats (NPR)Meanwhile, the administration is refusing to use emergency funds to avoid a lapse in benefits.Gay Republicans defend Greg Abbott removing rainbow crosswalks: Theyre politically divisive (LGBTQ Nation)The group said safety should be prioritized over symbols, but data shows vibrant crosswalks make the road safer.Gay Senate staffer easily completes ICE fitness test that Trump-Noem recruits are failing (The Advocate)Democrats are fit, Democrats are hot, and were tired of Republicans trying to lay claim to [health and fitness] when its so demonstrably false, Josh Sorbe told The Advocate.Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: When the Trump administration slashed SNAP benefits in half, 21-year-old Asherah Barton lost more than just money for food. Living with autism and navigating life as a young trans adult, Barton shares their real life story about how the cuts are affecting them. Fundamentalist religious communities are famously unsafe for queer people, leading many who are raised within them to try to leaveand deconstruct their relationship with Godlater in life. For those whove never known anything else, that process can take years. Jake Angelo investigates through the lens of one former Mormon missionary in Utah. Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief spencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Xian Brooks at Range USA in Louisville. Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky. Editors note: This story includes references to sexual violence which may be distressing to some readers. If you or someone you know needs support, resources can be found here. This story is written in partnership with Queer Kentucky, a diverse LGBTQ-run nonprofit based in Louisville, Kentucky working to bolster and enhance queer culture and health.Subscribe nowEvery month, Xian Brooks heads to Range USA in Louisville to practice his shot.We can talk about community and showing up for each other all day, but when it matters most, you only have yourself, and you need to be able to count on that [to defend yourself], Brooks, a 42-year-old who was born and raised in Kentucky, told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media.Xian Brooks. Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.Like many other trans people of color in the red and rural state of Kentucky, Brooks recognizes that hes more likely to be a target of violence because of his gender identity and the color of his skin.Thats in part because of the history the state has when it comes to gun violence. In 2023, for example, Zachee Imanitwitahoknown to her friends as Zacheewas shot and killed outside of the JBS Foods plant where she worked in Louisville. The gunman and Zachees coworker, Edilberto Lores-Reyes, confessed to killing her.While Reyes official motive remains unknown, Zachees killing represents an alarming trend: a sharp increase in anti-trans violence.Homicides of trans people in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2017 and 2023 with a total of 263 victims, according to Everytown for Gun Safetys Transgender Homicide Tracker.In those six years, 73% of the victims were killed with a gun.Subscribe nowDespite these numbers, the rhetoric and policies of the federal government paint trans people as perpetrators of gun violence. Within hours of the killing of far-right Trump ally and anti-LGBTQ activist Charlie Kirk, rumors circulated that a transgender person was responsible. In the aftermath, conservatives, including South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, called for the institutionalization of trans people.And after the mass shooting in Minneapolis in August that killed two children, it was reported that the Justice Department was discussing stripping gun rights away from trans people. However, the National Rifle Association pushed back, saying they will not support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.This swath of misinformation has put trans people on edge as Americans have been manipulated to view them as a threat to their safety. And its causing many trans people in Kentucky to arm up or find other ways to defend themselves.Subscribe nowSteve Drayton, a founding member of Pink Pistols of the Bluegrass, a Lexington, Kentucky chapter of the national LGBTQ gun rights group, says he has seen an increase in trans members in the months since Kirk was killed.It brought the focus back onto the transgender community, and not rightfully so, he told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media. If only we put this kind of focus on every other type of murder. Theyre taking a group of individuals and painting them as awful people, which theyre not. Theyre educated, theyre teachers, theyre firefighters, theyre human beings. Theyre wives, theyre husbands.While the false narrative around trans people as disproportionately likely to commit gun violence was already simmering in America, Kirks murder took it to a boil. Trump-affiliated conservative groups like The Oversight Project, a venture incubated by the Heritage Foundation, have urged the Federal Bureau of Investigation to create a new category of terrorism called Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism. And a Trump executive order from September designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist group.In the order, Trump references the gender identity of trans terrorists but never of cisgender terrorists, describing a transgender Antifa terrorist, a deranged transgender individual and a transgender individual whose manifesto included plans to kill Donald Trump.Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.Ive gotten a lot more tense, says Brooks. Im more distrustful, and my head is on a swivel more. I always know where the exits are when I go somewhere.Brooks says he started carrying his Taurus G2C instead of keeping it at his home in 2018 after two Black people were gunned down and killed because of their race at a Kroger in suburban Louisville.Miss Vicki was my moms neighbor, says Brooks, referring to one of the victims. During [the altercation], there was a person in the parking lot that had a firearm that tried to neutralize the threat. If I had taken my mom to the grocery store that day, my firearm would have been locked up and not with me.Brooks grew up in Louisvilles West End in the Shawnee neighborhood, which experiences a disproportionate amount of violence. Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.A lot of us were taught to fear guns because a lot of peoples family members were dying by guns, he says. It was taught that guns were not toys. We couldnt have water guns, pop guns or even [play] finger guns.But as a Black trans man in todays political climate, Brooks made the decision to start carrying.While he says his race causes him to fear for his safety the most, his fears of violence due to his trans identity have been increasing since the 2024 presidential election.Nothing is hypothetical anymore, he says. I dont think anybody should be too comfortable.Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.Thats part of the reason Brooks is now advocating for gun safety and education for trans people and people of color. While Brooks isnt a licensed educator, he feels he has no choice but to help and wishes politicians werent fueling a climate that is putting his community in danger. Im down to take any Black or trans person to the gun range on me. Lets go. We can talk about gun safety and teach you what to expect.Sarah Moore, senior manager of news and research at GLAAD and lead for the groups ALERT Desk, which tracks anti-LGBTQ extremism, says that more than half of reports to the desk from June 2024 to June 2025 involved anti-trans incidents.Its coming out in both violent and nonviolent actions, Moore told Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky. Whether that be protests, online harassment or actual acts of violence against the community, as well as the legislation that were seeing thats attempting to govern trans peoples bodies and lives.According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 286 anti-trans laws passed in the U.S. since 2022, with 122 of them passing in 2025. In Kentucky alone, there have been five laws passed this year on top of the infamous Senate Bill 150 from 2023, which bans gender-affirming care for minors, implements anti-LGBTQ censorship in Kentucky schools and prohibits trans students from using bathrooms and facilities that match their gender identity.Moore says there is a very direct correlation to these acts of [anti-trans] violence and the political rhetoric and policies of the U.S. government.She says that earlier this year in Seattle, a trans woman was attacked by a group of men while walking down the street. While they were assaulting her, they were yelling slurs and shouting Semper Fi, the official motto of the United States Marine Corps. The woman asked them why they were attacking her and explained to them that she was a military veteran. Trump kicked people like you out of the military, the men responded.Were seeing examples like that where people will actually cite directly these acts of federal or state-level legislation as part of their justification for acts of violence against the community, says Moore.When Trump took office last year, Alex, a 32-year-old trans man in Louisville, Kentucky, who requested anonymity because of safety concerns, says he purchased a second gun because he saw his community becoming the scapegoat to all of Americas problems.Now, I have taken a self-defense course, conceal carry my firearm, keep those kitty ear knuckle things on my keychain, and have a knife, he told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media. I always know at least two or three ways to exit any situation I am in.Unlike Brooks, Alex chooses to carry in situations that he deems are more dangerous, like when he travels rural Kentucky with his trans wife.Getting sideways glances from people [in a small town Walmart] who can see that Im somewhere on the queer spectrumI carry in case they were to follow me to my car and/or pick a fight, he says. Additionally, if they dont clock me, but were to clock my partner and if someone decided to start trouble there, that would not be tolerated.Subscribe nowThe Trump administrations portrayal that Alex and other trans people in Kentucky are more likely to commit acts of violence is simply false. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 5,748 mass shooting incidents in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 15, 2025. Of those, just 0.1% of themor five in totalinvolved a trans shooter.According to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, transgender people are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault and aggravated or simple assault.Alex was raped when he was 26 and says the trauma of the situation compels him to prepare for future victimization. We are a means to an end, he says. Its very disheartening and I work every day to not internalize their ideas about me. We are not dangerous, we are not wasted space, we just want to exist and be safe.Julie, a 33-year-old Louisville transgender woman who requested to use only her first name for safety reasons, agrees. Since 2021, she has carried a concealed weapon. She says fear of transgender people is nothing new.Theyve been scared of us the whole time and also, people are scared of guns, she says. So if you take the boogeyman, which is trans people right now, and then you say they have guns and theyre shooting at Christian people. You know what I mean? Thats what it is.Julie says transgender people are peaceful and wishes the politicians would leave them alone. She says that if a transgender person, or anyone, is buying a gun out of emotional fear and feels afraid to leave the house, they should check in with themselves or reconsider the purchase.Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.The last option is to point a gun at somebody. Its the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth option. Before you draw your gun, you can always reason with somebody, and you can always reason with them after you draw your gun, she says. You can reason with them while youre pointing, but you cannot reason with somebody after you shoot them. And that is very important to think about.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Screenshots via each respective groups website. Designed using Kumu.io.Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing Kim Davis latest push for the Supreme Court to overturn gay marriage, wants to reshape American society in a far-right Christian imageone in which LGBTQ people are excluded. Theyve been fighting LGBTQ rights for years, from Lawrence v. Texas to Proposition 8 to Obergefell. Along the way, theyve claimed that gay people know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive and that they are not controlled by reason, but rather by lust.While the brunt of their work focuses on right-wing litigation, their efforts dont stop there. An Uncloseted Media investigation has uncovered that Liberty Counsel operates as an umbrella organization that has either founded or heavily supported a large network of affiliated organizations working to pursue far-right Christian politics by influencing key American institutions.What I compare it to are gears in a machine, and each one serves a different purpose, Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, told Uncloseted Media.These groups use education to spread far-right Christian doctrine, they galvanize churches to become activist hubs and they work behind the scenes to influence Supreme Court justices and other government officials.All of these groups, many of which are frequently referred to as ministries, share the enthusiastic support of Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver and the common goals of fighting against LGBTQ rights, cracking down on abortion, influencing American law and politics and more.This array of ministries reflects the varied fronts in the religious rights war against LGBTQ Americans and our freedom, says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at challenging the far right. He says that this network strategically works in tandem to drum up support among congregations and conservative women and to influence American media, courts and schools. To make sense of these dizzying connections, we spoke with key experts and we dug into the groups that are part of Liberty Counsels expansive network. Heres what we found about each of them:1. Liberty Counsel ActionScreenshot from Liberty Counsel Action.Liberty Counsel Action is a companion to Liberty Counsel. While the two groups are formally distinct and have slightly different leadership, Mat Staver is chairman for both groups, and they have very similar website architecture. The primary distinction is that Liberty Counsel is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a designation for religious and charitable organizations, while Liberty Counsel Action is a 501(c)(4), a designation for social welfare groups. While the designations are similar, donations to 501(c)(3) organizations are tax-deductible, but the groups cannot endorse or donate to political campaigns. Meanwhile, donations to 501(c)(4) organizations are not tax-deductible, but they can donate to and endorse candidates.Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Photo by Gage Skidmore.Montgomery says its a fairly common strategy for organizations to maintain different groups like this. While Liberty Counsel is able to bring in more money due to tax incentives for donors, Liberty Counsel Action can freely engage in political advocacy.Some of the groups campaigns include fighting the Equality Act and calling for Congress to investigate pro-Palestinian student organizations. One of their initiatives this year has been drafting Abortion in Our Water, a report that outlines how abortion pills are polluting U.S. water supplies, a claim that environmental scientists have rejected. Theyre also currently pushing for Republicans not to cave to the Schumer Shakedown, a nickname theyve used for the ongoing government shutdownFor more direct political action, Liberty Counsel Action also had a super PAC which spent nearly $70,000 on opposing Barack Obamas reelection.Montgomery says having these different branches allows Liberty Counsel to achieve more diverse control in politics and the law.Some of [their goals] they can achieve through the courts, some of it is gonna be through political advocacy. So then you start an advocacy affiliate, and then you start a PAC because you want to elect people who can help you get this vision of the country, he says.2. Faith and LibertyScreenshot from Faith and Liberty.Founded in 1995, Faith and Libertyoriginally named Faith and Actionis a Washington, D.C. based Christian ministry that has historically courted Supreme Court justices and other government officials behind closed doors. The groups former president, Rev. Rob Schenck, decided to leave the Christian right in 2016 after the movements embrace of then-candidate Donald Trump compounded his growing doubts about the ideology.MAGA I dont even define as Christianity anymore, Schenck told Uncloseted Media. Its an apostasyits a defection from the Christian faith. It is, in fact, the diametric opposite of what Jesus taught and modeled.Schenck says that the group would host dinners, prayers and other meetings with conservative politicians and Supreme Court justices including Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia, where they would encourage the justices to adopt more radical rhetoric and policies.We would tell [the justices] over and over again: The people love you when you are bold and uncompromising and unapologetic, so be strongwe are with you, were behind you, Schenck says, adding that his former organization was internally nicknamed the Ministry of Emboldenment.Other activities of the ministry included outreach to young people at colleges and youth programs with an eye toward recruiting future right-wing political and judicial figures. This included hosting events and offering internships for conservative teenagers in the U.S. Capitol.Schenck says attendees of these events would discuss how the federal government works, meet the conservative justices, sit in on cases relevant to our Christian conservative agenda, and attend lectures about the judicial branch sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society. Schenck says he later saw many of these individuals in the Capitol, and that the group encouraged their federal judge contacts to prioritize graduates from conservative Christian universities for clerkships and other staff positions.While Schenck intended to dismantle Faith and Action following his shift in beliefs, he allowed the group to be acquired by Liberty Counsel in 2018 after pressure from the board and donors.In 2022, Rolling Stone reported that Schencks successorPeggy Nienaberwas caught on a hot mic bragging about praying with Supreme Court justices prior to their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which cited a brief filed by Liberty Counsel. Staver told Rolling Stone that these allegations are entirely untrue.Schenck says Nienaberwho was his deputy when he led the companyalways had a great ability to get into rooms with Americas key lawmakers.Peggy was very good at what she did, and she was particularly skilled at gaining access to people who had all kinds of defensive measures to protect them from the public or from people that they did not want to entertain, he says. It would shock me if Mat [Staver] did not deploy her for those purposes, and I do know she had well-established relationships inside the Supreme Court, certainly inside the Republican sides of both houses [of Congress].In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel says, Mat Staver has not spoken to Rob Schenck since 2017, and he has no knowledge of what Peggy Nienaber does and what she does now is vastly different than what she did when she worked for him. It is preposterous to think a Supreme Court Justice can be influenced. We have no such agenda. We do litigate in the courts and have been successful at all levels by advocating for correct legal principles.Subscribe now3. The Salt and Light CouncilScreenshot via The Salt and Light Council.The Salt and Light Council trains U.S. pastors on how to start a Biblical Citizenship Ministry at their churches. These ministries are meant to encourage congregations to engage in politics to defend and promote life, natural marriage, [and] our constitutional and religious liberties. The group was founded in 2008 by Dran Reese, and it became a ministry of Liberty Counsel in 2013. While the group now appears to operate independently, Staver remains chairman of its board.Pastors who sign up to start a Biblical Citizenship Ministry pick someone from their congregation to lead it, send them to attend The Salt and Light Councils trainings and then receive two topics a week to bring to their congregants, with the group also promising legal support from Liberty Counsel for these pastors.Salt and Light chapters, which now exist at over 120 churches and synagogues in 30 states, are frequently active in anti-LGBTQ activism: Reese has been caught spreading false stories about sexual harassment by trans girls in bathrooms, and the group has fought to protest Drag Queen Story Hours and cancel LGBTQ-friendly book fairs. Perhaps most influentially, the group is a part of the Remnant Alliance, a Texas-based coalition of far-right Christian groups that have been collaborating to swing school board elections and implement policies such as LGBTQ book bans across the state.Montgomery says the groups decentralized model allows them to operate on a surprisingly efficient budget.[It] doesnt have a huge budget, doesnt have a huge staff, because its mostly about encouraging local churches to start their own chapters and do their own thing, he says. The council provides them with resources, like brochures on issues or voter guides.4. We Impact the Nation (WIN)Screenshot from We Impact the Nation.Founded in 2005 as Women Impacting the Nation, this group is a project of Boca Raton-based conservative activist Sue Trombino. Prior to its rebranding to We Impact the Nation in 2024, the group became a project of Liberty Counsel for a few years beginning in 2011.WIN founder Sue Trombino on Newsmax in 2015 (Newsmax).During this time, Liberty Counsel sponsored WINs annual conference called For Such a Time as This, featuring scripture readings and baptism and offering renewed commitments to faith and service.As recently as September, WIN distributed copies of Take Back America, a book written by Staver that argues that God is the foundation of good government and national prosperity and that we need God in America again.Today, the group hosts talks, conferences and local chapter meetings with the goal of activating women to be conservative activists. They are most active in Southeast Florida, where they host monthly meetings and were a significant player in the campaign which defeated a constitutional amendment that would have protected abortion in the state. The group has also historically been active in spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, advocating for bathroom bans as early as 2013, arguing against conversion therapy bans, and calling for funding to be cut to groups that disobey Trumps executive orders against gender ideology.5. Covenant Journey AcademyScreenshot via Covenant Journey Academy.Covenant Journey Academy is an online K-12 school that incorporates Christianity into its curricula. Founded by Staver and launched by Liberty Counsel in 2023, the group targets parents who want to homeschool their kids and is billed as an alternative to woke public schools. The academy is now accredited in its home state of Florida and is even eligible for a state scholarship program.Each of the academys courses features what they call Biblical Integration. One Bible class for middle schoolers called Lightbearers promises that students will learn how to apply their Christian faith to every area of life and study and covers topics such as abortion, apologetics, cults, evolution, feminism, homosexuality, naturalism, moral relativism, pluralism, relationships, and socialism. Staver has promoted Covenant Journey Academy as a way for parents to avoid LGBT propaganda and LGBTQ grooming.6. New RevolutionScreenshot via New Revolution Facebook.New Revolution is a publishing service owned by Liberty Counsel that helps produce media for Christian organizations.The group has published a book depicting foundational sex researcher Alfred Kinsey as a mad scientist and pervert extraordinaire; and Kim Davis memoir, which they say goes behind the scenes to reveal how God gave this unlikely candidate a platform to defend marriage and religious freedom.In February, they advertised their services to other far-right groups at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.Subscribe now7. National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC)Screenshot via NHCLC.NHCLC is an organization that represents Hispanic Christian churches, with 18 chapters across the country. While this group has never been formally controlled by Liberty Counsel, they maintain close ties: Staver sits on the board, the groups frequently collaborate on projects, and in 2014, Liberty Counsel described itself as the NHCLCs legislative and policy arm.NHCLC founder Samuel Rodriguez speaking at Trumps inauguration in 2017. Screenshot via PBS NewsHour.The organization and its founder, Samuel Rodriguez, have been some of the most influential voices in building support for Trump and the Republican Party among Latino voters, as well as in defending the administrations recent immigration crackdowns. Rodriguezs connections are particularly deep, having served as a faith advisor in the White House under George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Now, as a member of Trumps White House Faith Office, Rodriguez told the New York Times that he and other faith leaders have unprecedented access to political power. Throughout this time, he has opposed marriage equality and protections for LGBTQ immigrants.8. Covenant JourneyScreenshot from Covenant Journey.Covenant Journey is a ministry of Liberty Counsel which hosts Christian-focused religious tours of Israel. Some have compared the organization to a Christian version of Birthright, a program that takes non-Israeli Jewish people on tours of the country. Liberty Counsel initially began hosting these holy land tours in 2011 under a different group called Liberty Ambassador Counsel, which was founded following a conversation between Staver and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the goal of strengthening [participants] Christian faith and equipping them to be goodwill ambassadors for Israel.The Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the sites visited on Covenant Journeys tours. Photo by Golasso.By 2014, they rebranded to Covenant Journey, and after winning a fight for control of the project over pro-gay Republican businessman Paul Singer, they have hosted the tours since then.The groups website says the tours are only for Christian college-age students who (1) have leadership potential and (2) have some level of support for or interest in Israel. They include visits to multiple sites of Biblical significance in East Jerusalem and parts of the Palestinian West Bank, which the International Court of Justice argues is illegally occupied by Israel.Covenant Journey promises that the tours will include expert briefings from Israeli leaders in government, national security, and technology. Some alumni of the trip include Republican political strategist and former Matt Gaetz staffer Luke Ball and Republican Florida politicians Jennifer Sullivan and Gavin Rollins.Kaell says that holy land tours organized by Christian groups are mutually beneficial: The Israeli government gets more tourism to boost public relations among U.S. Christians, while the Christian groups use the tour sites as living proof of the events described in the Bible, thus reinforcing their religious, political and social beliefs.9. Christians in Defense of IsraelScreenshot via Christians in Defense of Israel.Christians in Defense of Israel was founded by Ed Hindson, the late televangelist and dean of Liberty Universitys School of Divinity, and have said they have 90,000 supporters. The group focuses on pro-Israel advocacy and became a ministry of Liberty Counsel in 2014 when Hindson had a sincere desire to expand [his groups] influence.The groups activities center on publishing pro-Israel media and organizing marches and other events. They gained attention in 2017 for producing a 13-part TV series called Why Israel Matters. Theyve also made booklets like Why Islamists Hate Israel and Big Lies: Answers to the Top 10 Slanders, Smears and Libels against Israel. They continue to publish regular opinions about the Middle East to their website, where they frequently advocate against the recognition of Palestinian statehood.Theyre currently pushing for legislation that would prohibit official United States documents and materials from using the name West Bank, and for Israel to re-conquer Gaza.Theyve also organized recent major protests against the International Court of Justices genocide trial over Israels attacks on Gaza since 2023, and they have maintained ties with the Israeli government, with Staver meeting Benjamin Netanyahu as recently as February.In his writings on Israel, Hindson, who passed away in 2022, has argued that the Bible should be interpreted to understand a Jewish Israel as crucial to the end times. Kaell says that this ideology, which some scholars refer to as Christian Zionism, has been increasingly influential among the evangelical right, and that its theological basis often leads supporters to have more radical views than many Jewish Zionists. In emails to Uncloseted Media, representatives of Covenant Journey and Liberty Counsel say that Hindson is not part of the Christians in Defense of Israel ministry.We should always be aware that [their support] is always ambivalent, because its only if the state of Israel or if Jews do what those Christians think they should be doing in order to further the Christian need and narrative, Kaell says. Their vision will align with some Israelis who also believe God promised this land, as in what is today Palestine on the West Bank. So [they] dont just support Israel all the time, theyre supporting certain policies and things happening within Israel.Share10. Liberty Relief InternationalScreenshot via Liberty Relief International.Liberty Relief International is a charity ministry focused on helping persecuted Christians throughout the world. The group was founded in 2014 to support Christian relief efforts in response to ISIS invasion of Iraq, and they have persistently spread anti-Islam rhetoric. A 2015 press release positioned their goal as helping the victims of Islam; a more recent one was titled The Worst Persecution Worldwide Takes Place in the Name of Islam; and a third was titled A Horrific Peek into the Minds of Islamists.Kaell says that spreading rhetoric about the persecution of Christians abroad allows right-wing evangelical groups to promote the belief that Christians are persecuted in the U.S. as well, a belief that Liberty Counsel espouses, which helps fuel their attacks on LGBTQ rights and other far-right targets.Over the last 20 years or so, theres a lot of this idea that white evangelical men are the most persecuted of Americans, and that they are being stifled, and that they are not being given their due, and that somethings being taken away from them, Kaell says. What feeds into this narrative is the idea that evangelical Christians elsewhere are also persecuted, so that white evangelicals in the United States are one of a larger global set of persecuted Christians.Subscribe for accountability journalism.Additional GroupsLiberty Prayer Network is a prayer-focused ministry started by Liberty Counsel in 2013. Headed by Maureen Bravo, the network hosts weekly international prayers for the success of Liberty Counsel and the goals of the Christian right.Uncloseted Media also found documents for The Best Foundation, an organization whose stated purpose is to support Liberty Counsel, Inc. by making grants in support of Liberty Counsel, Inc.s exempt activities. The group does not list any actual grants it has made, and their only visible activity is that they hold partial ownership of Gulf Medical Holdings, LLC, the company of inventor Vance Shaffer.Covenant Journey, Liberty Relief International, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, The Salt and Light Council, Covenant Journey Academy, We Impact the Nation, and Faith and Liberty did not respond to requests for comment. Liberty Counsel Action did respond only to confirm that they no longer operate Liberty Action PAC.Additional reporting by Sam Donndelinger. If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Subscribe nowI remember taking an Introduction to Canadian Studies course in my third year at McGill University. The takeaway from the class was that Canadas national identity is built around an ideology that we are proud to be not American. As Americas northern neighbor, we are fractional in size, with only slightly more people living in Canada than in California. Perhaps due to an inferiority complex, we pride ourselves in being better than the U.S.: we boast about how we are happier people and have universal healthcare, less income inequality, more tolerance for diversity and less gun violence. But therein also lies the problem. This grass is greener mentality gives Canadians an out from not having to reflect on the problems we face within our own borders.This idea is particularly relevant when it comes LGBTQ rights. While the U.S. government is waging an unprecedented attack on the queer community, Canada is far from perfect: Albertas government, egged on by anti-LGBTQ parent groups, has instituted a new book ban policy; Saskatchewans Parents Bill of Rightswhich has been cited as an example of the encroachment of Americas culture warsrequires teachers to get parental consent to call trans kids by anything other than their deadnames; and former prime ministerial frontrunner Pierre Poilievre has an anti-trans track record that closely mirrors Donald Trumps.These policies have a tangible impact: 56% of Canadas LGBTQ youth meet the criteria for a variety of mental health and substance use disorders compared with 29% of their cisgender heterosexual counterparts, and hate crimes against LGBTQ Canadians went up by 388% between 2016 and 2023.In the last few months, Ive had countless conversations with Canadian friends and colleagues about how we need to remain vigilant and take action to make sure Americas anti-LBGTQ ecosystem doesnt bleed north of the border. Ive reflected on what that means for Uncloseted Media. How can we, as a journalistic organization, help hold the line in my home country, which has been a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights on the global stage?The answer is simple: were going to start telling more Canadian stories. In the next few months, expect a rollout of more Canadian content examining the countrys anti-LGBTQ ecosystem that fuels misinformation and misunderstanding and promotes principlessuch as division and intolerancethat are antithetical to Canadian values. Expect investigations, but also human-centered stories that unpack what its like to be, for example, a kid growing up in an intolerant household in rural Alberta.While our geographical coverage is expanding, our commitment to journalistic rigor and the truth remains the same. Were excited to take you on a ride north of the border and equally thrilled to announce that Canadians can now donate to Uncloseted Media through our campaign with the Veritas Foundation. Special shoutout to Veritas Executive Director Mark Bonham for helping us with this exciting initiative. If you are Canadian and would like to contribute, you can do so here:Donate to Uncloseted Media from CanadaRead or watch a few Canadian stories weve already done:Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

Anthony Siteman presenting his research at Quinnipiac University. Photo courtesy of Siteman. Design by Sam Donndelinger. Subscribe nowAs the internet becomes an increasingly powerful incubator for extremist ideas, young men are finding themselves drawn into online ecosystems that blur the lines between memes, masculinity and hate.Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than left-wing or Islamist extremists, and studies indicate that right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism fatalities since 2001. In 2025, online radicalization has become more hidden and widespread, with extremists using encrypted apps, gaming communities and private chatrooms to recruit and groom young people. These platforms make it increasingly difficult to detect or intervene, allowing hate-filled and violent ideologies to spread unchecked.Anthony Siteman, a senior at Quinnipiac University studying political science and public relations, has spent his undergrad researching how radicalization spreads through digital spacesand even went undercover in extremist chat rooms to understand it firsthand. As a white cis straight man, the rhetoric of hate he uncovered made him realize the urgency of developing communication strategies that can deradicalize his peers at a time when ideologies in extremist circles that promote violence against LGBTQ people are penetrating deeper into the minds of young American men.Watch the video or read the transcript below.Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, today I am speaking with Anthony Siteman a senior political science and public relations student at Quinnipiac University, whose work specializes in online radicalization, and he even went undercover inside some of these groups as part of that work. Anthony, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.Anthony Siteman: Thank you, Spencer, for having me here.SM: So you specialize in online radicalization. What got you interested in that? Because I think its a big problem in the United States right now. And a lot of the time its actually young white men around your age, likely, who are the perpetrators of this.AS: Yeah, well, you said it right there. Since Im a young white male and Im from a suburban Massachusetts town that is mainly white people. So Ive been around it my whole life and Ive always wondered why are these people having the views that they have?SM: Tell me some of the things you saw in your friend groups that was concerning for you in terms of social media.AS: Yeah, so my concern is that anytime they open up social media, theyre believing anything that they see. And its mainly just, you know, Oh my god, look at what President Bidens doing. Oh my god. Look at what the Democrats are doing. For example, when I first moved to campus, I lived with eight guys, all white guys. And you know just getting to know them and seeing what their views are. It just seems like One is that theyre not even politically active. They dont understand whats going on around the world. So they will just believe whatever theyre seeing without doing any research into it.SM: Did you notice that when they start seeing a certain kind of content, it just keeps going more and more and more of that down a rabbit hole?AS: 100%. For example, Nick Fuentes. Hes really been blowing up on peoples algorithms. And one time, just a couple of weeks ago, one of my friends was screen sharing his TikTok to the TV and every single post was just Nick Fuentes.SM: What do you think of that?AS: Its not good. We use these social media platforms every day and we expect them to be so good and great, but theyre really shaping the way we view things, the way that we see things, by pushing these algorithms. When I was doing the research into thisI obviously dont support any of this stufftrying to search about radicalization, it would damage my algorithm so much because everything I started getting was pro-Trump, pro-Trump or pro-Republican or just anti-Democrats.SM: So interesting. And why do you think, especially for like young bros, really, you know, like something about the Nick Fuenteses, about the Andrew Tates, about these people does resonate with your demographic. Why do you think that is in 2025?AS: I just think that its because those conversations, what Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes are saying, is sometimes what kids my age just talk about. And for them to hear it from someone that has some sort of status, some sort of fame, money? That it just really resonates with them because usually you only hear [those] conversations just with a group of teenagers and them talking amongst themselves. So when they hear that someone with some influence is saying the same things as them, it really pushes them to really believe what theyre saying.SM: Im gonna sound like a geriatric millennial here, but meme culture and the idea of the cool effect, like theres something cool and edgy about these guys, I think, to a lot of young men in America. What do you think is up there?Subscribe nowAS: Yeah, yeah, thats a good question. For example, Andrew Tate, he says like, This is how to be a man. If you wanna be a man, this is how you gotta treat people, this is how you gotta view things. You gotta look at life this way. Same thing with Nick Fuentes. [Hes] saying like, If you really care about the white race, if you care about America, then you should be protecting it through these beliefs, which is just white nationalism.SM: Growing up in the last 20 years, if I look at whats happened, theres been a lot of progress for LGBTQ rights, womens rights. So I would think that Gen Z guys would be way more sympathetic to women and LGBTQ people, but thats not necessarily the case. For a lot of guys, its gone the opposite direction. What do you thinks behind that?AS: Despite what progress this country has made or progress around the world, they put this lifestyle out to people and its like, If you follow what Im doing, what Im saying, what Im believing in, then you will get this lifestyle. People are so influenced by them because no one else [is] saying these things. If youre saying the stuff that Nick Fuentes or Andrew Tate are saying online youre going to get canceled or youre just not going to get a following. But since they already have that following, theyre allowed to say that stuff, and then people will fall for it.SM: Right. Wow. Really interesting. And then theres obviously the Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tates, but then there is a lot deeper radicalization as well that can happen. So tell me about your research project. What was it and what did you set out to do?AS: Yeah, so my research was just focusing on radicalization on social media platforms. I originally started with just Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok. But the most I could really find is just the people we were just talking about: Tate, Fuentes. So I realized that, yes, theyre monitored to a degree. They still have these hateful people on it, but there isnt so much radicalization. Thats when I started to go to other platforms like Telegram. I went on Discord. When I was on those apps, then thats when I was able to find like these more secret groups of people who have all the same opinions and views. But since Discord and Telegram, for example, those are channel-only apps. So you cant just like, you dont have profiles. And thats when I started finding the real radicalization.SM: And tell me what you mean by that. What do you mean by real radicalization?AS: So yeah, when I view radicalization, I view it as when people are believing in extremist beliefs and then start using violence or support violence to achieve them. So in those apps, theyre always blaming someone. Its never their fault. Its always us versus them. And what makes Telegram so useful for these people is that all the messages are encrypted so that its hard for them to get leaked or for them to get out there. Its all basically anonymous.SM: What were some of the messages or the consistent themes you noticed in these message boards on Telegram?AS: Yeah, so when I was looking at them mainly, it was before the 2024 election and a lot of the messaging was like, Democrats, theyre fraud. Theyre all illegal. They support all of these bad causes.SM: You said that your definition of radicalization is when it gets to a level where theres violence involved, right? Did you see some of that in Telegram?AS: Yes, obviously it wasnt like physical violence, but theres a lot of people saying, you know, very hateful things, like Burn all Jews or We should send them to the gas chambers. What they did utilize a lot are memes of these violent events. So, for example, if they have a murder video... because you can access LiveLeak videos online and some of these channels, they would meme them.SM: What does that mean? To meme a video thats live of somebody getting murdered?AS: So for example, theres a game called Call of Duty and they release trailers for it, obviously. And they took a shooting video at a mosque in New Zealand where over like 50 people died. And they took the clips from that shooting and put it in like a trailer format.SM: What is the impetus for people doing that with that shooting? Is it Islamophobia? Is it just people being idiots?AS: I think they just have too much time on their hands. I think that they do wanna instill fear in people and they wanna just take bad events and turn it into something that is cool. So I think they wanna do it to just create some more fear and be like, Look at what we can do.SM: And you referenced something that actually just came out of the news today, that there was a big, I think, Telegram leak where young Republican leaders were using hundreds of racist and anti-LGBTQ slurs in a group chat, as well as jokes about slavery and rape. Why do you think its just so pervasive, that level of hate? Among, you know, groups that are seemingly just part of the GOP Young Peoples Club. And how do you think American politics has played into that? Because obviously, President Trumps rhetoric is pretty rough sometimes, too. Do you think because it comes from the top, that green lights it for young men in America at large?AS: Yeah, I think since Trump has [come] into office, he has kind of sent politics down to a very low level where you can kind of say whatever you want, do whatever you want. Since his rhetoric is so bad, it just stoops everyone to such a low level.SM: What do you think are the groups that we should be most concerned about right now? Because I know you did some research on the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups. What should people be worried about based on what you found in your research?AS: It can be anyone, it really can. Anyone can be an extremist, anyone could be radicalized. But if I had to say one group, it would just have to be white nationalists. It would have to be white nationalists who believe that America is losing its white identity, that they need to fight to come back, to fight to get their place back in this country.SM: And why do you think that?AS: Because just from my research of what Ive done, they contribute to 75% of extremist-related killings. In the past, about 10 years, theres been around 440 killings, and yeah, they account for 75% of them. So they are the majority of people who are committing these extremist acts in this country.SM: Which groups right now are you most concerned about, if any?AS: I would say the Proud Boys, despite what they say now that theyre not racist and that theyre accepting of all people, yes they are still [an] issue. When I was in their Telegrams, they have chapters all over this country and all over the world, frankly. They have chapters in New Zealand, Australia, all the European countries. So theyre pretty prevalent everywhere. One concern Im thinking, too, is the rise of Nazis again. Ive seen that with a lot of Jewish hate and with the rhetoric towards Jewish people now, especially with the war.SM: And you see that being played out, that kind of anti-Semitic hate in these channels on Telegram.AS: Its a mix. I feel like thats a place where it has split these extremists because theres the extremists who side with Israel and then theres extremists who side with Palestine. So I feel like that issue really split them in a way.SM: When I was doing my work in far-right extremism, there were those groups, there were groups like the Michigan Militia and the Boogaloo Boys, et cetera. But a lot of it was, to your point, decentralized groups. And one of those white supremacists said it was fragmented into a million little pieces as lone wolves. Are you concerned about individuals specifically and the idea of lone wolf acts of radicalization or terrorism?AS: Yes, because they can be anonymous in that way if theyre not tied to any group and if they are just logging on to their computer sending out hate messages, sending out fake disinformation and all this other stuff? Then yes, it is an issue with these decentralized groups. Its hard to stop decentralized groups because you dont know where theyre coming from. You dont know what platform theyre going to move to next. You dont know if theyre not even meeting on these social media platforms and they have a secret society where they meet in person somewhere. So its hard to really track them. No one uses a real name. No ones using pictures of themselves. Its all just them hiding behind a username or hiding behind just a profile.SM: And theyre probably using things like VPNs and like you said, encrypted messaging. So its very hard to track where they are.AS: Yeah, and one thing Ive noticed too is that some of these extremists, theyre not even from America. They utilize bots a lot. They utilize taking peoples information and making profiles for them. Especially older people, because as you know, 60-, 70-, 80-year-olds arent going to be on apps like X. Sure, there are some. But theyre going to get their information stolen and used on those apps and they wont even know about it. And so when you see Twitter threads of this elderly woman just arguing why Democrats are so bad, a lot of the time its not an elderly woman. Its someone behind the screen or its just a bot running the account.SM: Thats really interesting. So you think thats pretty prevalent? These fake kind of older Americans are just patriots, if you will, being run by other types of people.AS: Yeah, a hundred percent, and I like that you said the word patriots because thats always the word that they have in the bio, like, American Patriot, U.S. veteran for 20 years, and you can really tell too because they start like responding to all the same posts with the same message, or they start reposting the same image in all these other threads. So theres ways to tell, but a normal person isnt going to go through this persons profile and figure it out.SM: What are the main, kind of, rhetorical devices, things you have noticed as it relates to the LGBTQ community and how people are coming after that demographic group in these channels of radicalization?AS: Yeah, like you said with the pedophilia a lot of like I saw was that oh LGBTQ people are grooming these kids. That they want these kids to be in drag shows and just the normal rhetoric that has been being said for the past eight years that we obviously know isnt true. Mainly about LGBTQ individuals grooming the younger generation to try to pull them into their sickness. And thats another word too is that they use the word illness, sickness, that theyre not right.SM: And how prevalent is that? Theres a lot of that, I would guess.AS: Yeah, so some of the things I saw since it was June, it was a pride month, and they would post on June 1st Happy groomer awareness month.Meme of LGBTQ groomers found online. Courtesy of Siteman.SM: Thats interesting. What else are you concerned about with artificial intelligence and radicalization? I mean, youve mentioned that a few times and that does sound a little scary when you put it like that.AS: With artificial intelligence, you can get it to say whatever you want and you can get it to post whatever you want. So for example, they could have accounts that are just literally run by AI and spread just such nasty, nasty rhetoric and its not gonna get tied back to anyone because its AI running the account. They could have someone, just a fake persona on it. But theres not going to be many repercussions for the account saying it since its run by AI.SM: Super interesting and you know, were talking a lot about rhetoric here, right? Why is that still concerning though when it comes to something more violent and actually committing acts of violence and, God forbid, a mass shooting or a terrorist attack or something like that?AS: Yeah, that rhetoric itself, its damaging. Because even though people may not act on it, [they] hear that and internalize it. And if people are in a bad spot, maybe they will act on that type of stuff.Subscribe nowSM: Will you ever see, do you ever see people actually threatening violence in Telegram and saying, Lets do event X?AS: I would say yes, but they were obviously empty threats, to me at least. I could tell that they would say stuff like, Lets go to the streets. Lets go to a pride parade and go blow it up.SM: What about the rhetoric around women specifically and queer women?AS: They treat women as just [an] extension to the man. That women [are] good only if they listen to you and do everything that you say. The only good thing I heard them say about women is that they give birth to children.SM: The trans community, specifically, has really been under attack by the politicians in this country, and after Charlie Kirks assassination, the rhetoric about who the murderer was, even though there was no evidence that the perpetrator was trans, was grossly tied to transgender people. Even though, again, no evidence. What do you make of all of that?AS: I think that that whole rhetoric came out just because they just wanted someone to blame that wasnt themselves.Subscribe nowMeme courtesy of Siteman.SM: Why do you think they chose trans people?AS: These people are obviously not hearing trans voices. They dont know any trans voices. They dont know trans people. They just totally deny their existence. So they just want someone to blame. And its probably the easiest for them to blame because thats what theyve been using for the past like six years. That trans are grooming people in libraries, trans are going to the bathrooms and insane people all that stuff. So its just kind of their scapegoat.SM: I think a lot of it does come down to conceptions of masculinity and bro culture. You talk a lot about communicative devices to kind of push back against this. What else can be done among men in this country to tamp down on that rhetoric, to make it not as cool?AS: If you hear friends who talk like this, you have to have a conversation with them. And I know thats what everyone says, but seriously. From what Ive seen with my friends who have been somewhat radicalized, the best way to get to them is to just sit down and talk to them and just go through everything that theyre saying. Like, you know this isnt true. You know this isnt right.SM: I think a lot of guys might be listening to this being like, That sounds so hard. So do you have an example of a conversation youve had that you felt has actually worked?AS: Dont make them ever feel stupid like, Oh like why the hell would you believe that? So you dont want to be like, You cant look at this, you cant view this. You just have to be like, I understand what youre trying to say. I understand how you got to this view. But you have to understand that this isnt the full story. If you find a common ground between the issue that both of you can actually agree on, thats a good start because it gives you that ability to be like, You know what, maybe we arent that different after all. And thats something Ive really found out like talking with people that claim theyre on the right is that when they start talking and they start saying what they actually believe and how they view things, they sound a lot more left than actual right; they just want to be right because of what youre saying, that bro culture. Like, Oh men are on the right and girls are on the left.SM: Do you think there is a stereotype that being liberal in America right now is feminine?AS: Yeah, a hundred percent. 100%. I mean, obviously, I disagree with that. Like I go to a private school and its like 90% white. And I remember like when Trump won, it was like, like no liberal wussies allowed. Theres a connotation that if youre liberal, youre a loser.SM: Thats so interesting.AS: Which obviously isnt true, and I think that the only reason why they really connect with the Republican Party right now is one, that they fall for a lot of the manipulation and tactics theyre using. But also that the right uses the American flag and the symbols of [patriotism] in America much more than the left does, so for someone who actually fought for the country, theyre more likely to go on the right because theyre more like American flags and country music. Whereas the left, you dont really see that.SM: So interesting. What else can we do? Because I think its such a big problem in this country getting, honestly, your demographic, 21-year-old white straight men, to be less radical. You can be whatever political party you want, but like, can you leave the radicalization at the door? How do you get people to do that?AS: Yeah, it is hard. And thats what Im still trying to figure out right now. I just did some work looking at counter-radicalization, which is like, for example, theres a program called ExitUSA where they do private mentoring one-on-one. And that really helps someone. But the issue with that is that people who are radicalized, its not easy for them to admit that theyre radicalized. So those are great resources for people that are willing to make that change. But as of right now, its hard and thats why I think talking is just the best thing, just talking to people and just really, like, understand what their views are.SM: Youre in a group of bros, lets say a frat party, lets make it super stereotypical, and everyone else is just spitting transphobia. I would be nervous to interject. How do you intervene in a way that doesnt make you literally wanna disintegrate?AS: For me Id just be like, Yo, think before you talk. One of these people among us could be transgender. You dont know what youre saying and how it affects people, and I know youre trying to be cool, but you know lets be respectful. Because if theyre willing to stoop that low to talk all this hate about one group, then I can stoop that low, and I know thats maybe not the best tactic but I mean it has worked for me. It really puts them in perspective. It puts them in their place.SM: I do think the word cool is like a big word that I keep thinking about in this conversation, that people think its cool to be transphobic or its cool to be misogynistic, right? How do we change what young American guys think is cool?AS: I think it has to come from up top from our leaders allowing this rhetoric to begin with, because its like they allow these people to just think that these things are okay to say because their own people are saying it. Yeah, once we have two parties that can just really understand that what these people are saying is not okay, and if they hear these acts of violence or [this] bad language that they go to take action and be like, This is not okay to all of their supporters. A good way to help my generation understand it is put on the debate between Obama and Mitt Romney, theyre just so cordial. Its like, it hasnt always been like this. You can be on two opposite sides and you can still love each other and still be friends.Subscribe nowSM: And you really havent grown up at all with that type of political discourse because when Trump came down that escalator in 2016, you were 12.AS: Yeah, yeah.SM: Which is wild to think about. Anthony Siteman, thank you so much for your research in this important space of online radicalization and for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today. I really appreciate it.AS: Of course. Thank you, Spencer. It has been great being on here. Thank you so much.Additional reporting by Sam Donndelinger, Sophie Holland and Jelinda MontesIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

For generations, LGBTQ+ bars have been more than nightlife: theyve been sanctuaries. Over vodka sodas and jukebox tunes, they offered connection, safety, and visibility during times where simply existing as a queer or transgender person could be dangerous. Yet, like so much of queer history, the stories of these bars often fade when the lights go out and the last song plays. Thats where Art Smith comes in.A veteran journalist and lifelong chronicler of queer culture, Smith is the founder of GayBarchives, a digital archive devoted to preserving the history of LGBTQ+ bars across the globe. What began as a single Facebook thread is now a living, evolving record of queer spaces past and present, one that continues to grow every day.Art Smith. Photo: Dick Woelfle/ Mural by Avi RamIt all started with a conversation with one of Atlantas best known bar owners, Vicki Vara of Backstreet Atlanta, Smith recalls. After a lengthy conversation with her and a few posts on Facebook, the topic took on a life of its own. People started reminiscing and adding but we also went to the Armory, or Bulldogs, or the Pharr Library. Before long I had heard fond memories of dozens of gay bars [mostly in Atlanta] and decided to track down old ads and logos. That was the beginning.The response was immediate.The reaction to the logos was incredible, and the collection quickly grew to hundreds, he says. As we speak, my Library of Logos is approaching 5500 [domestic and international] and will be released in a new slideshow video later this year.What started as a nostalgic project during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic has become serious preservation work.As far as the images are concerned, I usually select one or two per bar that are iconic and represent the bar best to their [former] patrons, Smith explains. With the older bars this can be challenging due to limited access to images and ads, or the fact that some bars back then never really had logos.Poster for Backstreet Bar in Provincetown, Mass. circa 1979. Photo: GayBarchivesBeyond the logos, GayBarchives thrives on community storytelling.Our FB group is an open forum with nearly 17,000 members and growing, Smith says. Virtually anyone can post their memories, comments and stories there.While Smith occasionally challenges remarks or invites feedback from other members, he avoids being overly restrictive.Regarding the hundreds of video interviews I have conducted I only edit them to add images or remove technical errors and background sounds. Our gay bar history belongs to all of us, not just me.Smiths work has uncovered some unexpected discoveries.Probably the biggest surprise was that the first widely-recognized gay bar was located on the French Riviera, Smith says. Known as Zanzibar, it opened in 1885 and continued operating at that location until 2010. A 125 year run is incredible for any business, let alone a gay bar in Cannes France. I believe the space is a gelato shop today.The first gay bar Smith was able to identify in the U.S. was in NYC. Located in the basement of Pfaffs Steakhouse on Broadway, this space was frequented by Walt Whitman and operated in the 1850s and 1860s, but was not as widely known by the general public.The same building was later home to the well-known David Mancuso Loft, a hotspot for gay parties starting in the 1970s.Vancouver, BC gay bar, Celebrities, circa 1995. The bar is still active and open today. Photo: GayBarchivesSmiths drive goes beyond nostalgia. Our efforts to document the stories of the bars, cafes and nightclubs that helped build our community and fight for our rights has been largely untold, he says. Even the stories about the iconic venues [think Stonewall and Coopers Donuts] are largely inaccurate. We endeavor to get the stories from multiple sources and present them in a way that provides a more complete picture.Smith sees GayBarchives as a bridge between generations. By providing the information in a publicly-available format we help spread the word to a greater audience and we help inform the younger generations about what came before them, Smith says. Just like hearing tales of the adventures of your family ancestors gives you more insight into your family dynamic, these stories help our younger LGBTQ+ members relate to our struggles and appreciate how far we have come.Given the current political climate here and abroad, Smith shares that many younger queers are realizing that these bars and venues are our safe havens and community centers. Newer bar owners are taking notice and helping preserve our history. I am delighted to be part of that movement, he said.Looking ahead, Smith wants to see GayBarchives grow into a global network of collaboration.My biggest dream is that we are able to establish alliances with as many organizations as possible so that we can expand our reach and bring these stories to an even greater global audience, he says. We welcome input and participation from all of the LGBTQ+ chambers of commerce, media organizations, business guilds, bar owners and the general public to inform us about the places we may have missed and add details to the ones we have documented.The short-lived lesbian bar Cowgirls Oasis in Fort Worth, Texas. Circa 1995-1997. Photo: GayBarchivesSmith also urges queer historians to share their findings and bring wider attention to the history theyve worked so hard to document.We invite pride organizations to connect with us and tell their members about the work we [and other historians] are doing. Ultimately I would like to be able to create the worlds largest collection of the logos and stories of our special places.That vision has already earned recognition. Smith has been honored by Pride365 as a Champion and by CultureDash as a Culturally Significant Educator. His work has been featured by PBS stations in Atlanta and San Diego, and hes been interviewed by outlets including The Advocate, RevryTV, and Queer News Tonight.For Smith, who has spent decades in LGBTQ+ media as a journalist, editor, publisher, producer, and show hostGayBarchives is both an act of preservation and of gratitude. Since launching the project in 2019, he has archived nearly 5,500 logos and conducted more than 200 interviews.Ultimately, he says, I want GayBarchives to remind people that our bars were never just places to drink. They were places to belong.The post GayBarchives keeps our history on the record and our memories alive appeared first on News Is Out.

Special to News is Out fromPhiladelphia Gay NewsPeople think of big cities when they think about the LGBTQ community because its just more visible there, said Barry Loveland,co-founder of theLGBT Center of Central PA History Project, explaining that its often easier to find and document the stories of queer urban pasts. The more rural areas, like Central PA when I started this project 13 years ago, nobody was telling those stories.I felt overdue that we needed to start a history project here, he underlined. The same is true around the country.Research conducted by the Movement Advancement Projectshows that rural America is just as queer as the rest of the United States. LGBTQ+ people in rural regions make up at least 20% of the queer community. And thats not new. But the narratives many LGBTQ+ people know about queer history dont often include those voices.More historians who are getting into LGBTQ history need to look at these rural spaces, because they really are ripe for finding new history, new information thats been undocumented and uncollected so far, Loveland said.There are stories to be told because there were LGBTQ people in every community across the nation, he emphasized. Where there are people, theres history and theres stories to tell.LGBTQ+ communities in rural America. Photo: Movement Advancement ProjectQueer history is a part of American history that has often been hidden on purpose and its links to rural life have been especially suppressed. But Loveland isnt the only one seeking to uncover those connections.There were efforts that unfolded over the course of the 20th century to really try to bring rural areas and small towns under the sway of a kind of national consensus of what middle-class American life should be,Colin Johnson, a professor of gender studies and history at Indiana University, told theDaily Yonderin 2021. And those efforts were very, very successful.Before that, other ways of being and of thinking about diversity werent uncommon in these smaller communities, he explained.Notable frontier, heartland, and rural Southern stories of the 19th and 20th centuries show that sometimes tolerance and acceptance was part of the LGBTQ+ experience in rural America. LGBTQ+ people worked all kinds of jobs, participated in queer and activist communities, and werent always ostracized by family and friends in their tiny towns.But Johnson said these stories were displaced in the 1950s, burying centuries of rural LGBTQ+ histories across the United States. LGBTQ+ people and issues were intentionally erased from mention, and as a result, became disregarded. Worse, midcentury campaigns to paint LGBTQ+ people as problematic, demonizing the queer community in narratives that eventually went mainstream.LGBTQ+ people, especially the trans community, face a similar experience now suddenly thrust into the media spotlight as scapegoats subjected to political attacks after living with less attention in preceding years.Finding each otherLGBTQ+ activists were most visible in urban centers. Lobbying and awareness efforts to promote LGBTQ+ rights often took place in major city and state capitals. Protests, sit-ins and rebellions that happened in those areas gained the attention of national media. For this reason, it was also easier to find LGBTQ+ people in urban spaces as formal institutions and activist groups formed.But the quieter lifestyles of LGBTQ+ people in rural America didnt mean LGBTQ+ people disappeared, andthey still sought and found each other.Throughout LGBTQ+ history, small anchor cities or large towns became regional zones for people living in rural communities to find each other, Loveland explained pointing to a variety of places across central Pennsylvania, which served as gathering spaces and informational hubs for LGBTQ+ people during the midcentury and in modern times.Formal and informal phone trees played a big part in communicating local happenings.A volunteer-run switchboard in central Pennsylvania in the early 1970s took calls on weeknights to help LGBTQ+ people find affirmingmedical providers, religious groups, lawyers, social clubs, and each other.Founded as the Gay Switchboard of Harrisburg, the organization expanded by adding more hubs in other areas and publishing local guides.Resources importantly emerged as people formally organized bringing critical health care and hospice networks during the HIV/AIDS crisis, for instance, and launching LGBTQ+ voices into expansive advocacy careers. Across the US, some of the most impactful voices for change have come from rural regions.Although there werent any large intentional communities launched in Pennsylvania, feminist and back-to-the-land movements inspired some LGBTQ+ people to develop safe harbors in rural places for those who didnt fit in elsewhere in society as like-minded people sought new ways of supporting and liberating each other.But not every LGBTQ+ person was looking for radical ways of life or rallied around a public cause. Many lived simple lives and the tangible artifacts of their experiences show what it looks like to simply seek and create community.Loveland said that hes heard incredible accounts of suffering and survival and what its taken to overcome catastrophes like being disowned by family, facing violence and getting fired. But, he underlined, the project has also gathered stories and artifacts that represent the joy of gathering with like-minded people in community.Even though LGBTQ+ people living in rural America werent always out within their broader communities, they found ways to do the same things queer people are doing today dressing up, hosting events, playing sports and making art.Some of Lovelands favorite pieces in his projects collection include costumes, cat-eye glasses, and stage props from 1950s drag performances as well as a few objects obscura (like a table thats been decoupaged with penises cut from the pages of old magazines).The project has collected T-shirts, music and matchbooks. It even has posters and trophies won by theHarrisburg Hustlers a gay volleyball team that traveled up and down the mid-Atlantic for competitions throughout the 1980s.Building archives with few resourcesA lack of resources can sometimes cause barriers for those interested in preserving hyperlocal and rural LGBTQ+ histories, but networking among researchers, colleges, museums, libraries and other adjacent organizations and leaders can turn up volunteers and partners. Loveland fundraised for necessities and lucked into borrowing recording equipment. Two experienced historians trained volunteers to record oral histories and collect and handle photographs and physical artifacts at no charge. The group also attended Pride festivals to gather recruits.The LGBT History Project of Central PA has shared some exhibits online and is working to add more proving that a physical space to keep information and belongings isnt always crucial to get started. Loveland underlined that making just a few stories accessible could make a difference for someone struggling today.The objects and stories represent times in history that were hard on LGBTQ+ people in rural America during forced conformity, the Lavender Scare, movements of religious intolerance, and the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They show that even in quiet corners where people might otherwise think theyre alone, LGBTQ+ people persevered through hardship and have always found ways to celebrate life with each other.Weve made a lot of progress in recent years, but a lot of that can just erode away so quickly that people are very concerned, Loveland said about the risks to advances in LGBTQ+ rights in the current political climate.From the most prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to hyperlocal resource hubs, many queer-centered organizations have refused to go underground despite threats by the Trump administration. Theyre continuing to provide visible and tangible support. But not every locality has access and its a scary time to be openly queer. Some LGBTQ+ people dont feel as safe living out loud.Listening to and holding the historic stories of LGBTQ+ life in rural America can teach todays queer community about finding each other, preserving connections and building paths toward a better future.Do rural queers spend more time in community with each other, if only because they have fewer places to go? wondered writer Lauren Herold in an article she wrote forAutostraddleabout the work of another author, Clare Forstie, who wants to change perceptions about what life is like for LGBTQ+ people in rural communities. The idea resonated with Herold who said that LGBTQ+ colleagues were a lifeline for her in a small city that lacked many formalized resources or social networks for the queer community.Forsties book, which centers on presumed unfriendly Midwestern towns, addresses the nuances of connecting in rural America. Formal institutions might be the first place people turn to when they need support in big cities. But those organizations are not always local, active or accessible in smaller communities.Forsties work underlines that specific relationships create a stronger sense of queer community in these areas. Herold argues this might have something to teach urbanites that connecting withqueer communities is not just about using or sharing resources (though valid if needed) but also about simply being with each other.Its difficult to find assurances or to find comfort in thinking that theres going to be a better day ahead, Loveland added, explaining that rural history projects and history-centered LGBTQ+ organizations are critical for people to have something to cling to.It shows that people have gone through a lot of adversity, but weve made it through, he emphasized.The post The need to preserve LGBTQ+ histories of rural America appeared first on News Is Out.

At 27, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Sydnee Conley is stepping into the spotlight on her own terms. The queer artist, who uses she/her pronouns, has been writing for others in Music City for years. Now, shes channeling her talent and perspective into her own music, starting with her newest single, Heather.The songs promotion instantly caught attention for its nod to the 1988 dark comedy Heathers, a cult favorite that follows a clique of popular girls and the chaos that ensues around them. In promo spots, Conley is featured with her head sticking out of a croquet pitch, much like Winona Ryder in the films opening sequence. For Conley, the reference runs deeper than aesthetics.From left, Sydnee Conley and Winona Ryder in Heathers. Photos: Sydnee Conley and New World Pictures/TubiHeathers was one of my favorite movies in high school, she says. I wasnt allowed to watch much growing up, but when I got a laptop at 16, there was this whole new world of media at my fingertips. Then I just so happened to grow up and fall in love with a woman named Heather.When it came time to plan visuals for the single, Conley decided to weave the films vibe into the project. I thought, how funny would it be to theme everything around the movie? she says. I also loved the soundtrack of the musical version. I auditioned for it years ago and didnt get in. So this feels like getting to do it in my own way.A video for Heather is on the way, timed for release around Halloween. Im beyond excited to share, she says.Finding her momentConleys creative roots run deep. She grew up performing in theater and always loved music, but says she didnt have a clear artistic identity until recently.It sounds silly, but I just havent known what I wanted until now, she says. Ive always loved writing music and singing, but I never had a clear vision of myself as an artist until very recently. Now its there and I feel like diving in. At 27 I sometimes feel like Im getting a late start, but its the right time for me and thats what matters.Her sound, she says, sits somewhere between pop and lyrical storytelling. Its pop-leaning, lyrically driven, definitely influenced by theater, but not too heavy on that, I hope, she says. I just want to make things people can relate to.Queer pops momentumThe recent rise of queer pop stars hasnt gone unnoticed by Conley, who feels a shift in how LGBTQ+ artists are received.Some of the queer artists making it big right now are doing a great job of being loud and proud while also making art that anyone can relate to, she says. If youre straight, you can probably still connect to a song like Casual by Chappell Roanweve all been there.That relatability, paired with visibility, feels especially urgent. Its such a difficult time for marginalized communities, she says. We need queer stories and voices to be heard now more than ever.Whats nextConley promises more of what fans love about Heather. Expect catchy, heartfelt pop that balances emotional depth with fun, bold visuals.More upbeat yet emotionally deep songs, she says. And more cool visuals by Heather Hughes herself to go with them. Maybe an EP even? We shall see.The post Nashville artist Sydnee Conley steps into her own story with Heather appeared first on News Is Out.

Special to News is Out from Philadelphia Gay NewsMaria Pulzetti said many folks will tell her that their first exposure to LGBTQ+ activism was in middle school or high school, through the national youth movement known as Day of Silence. However, these same folks do not realize a key detail about the annual event until Pulzetti informs them.Theyre always very surprised that its connected to me, she said.Pulzetti co-founded the event while she was a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1996, and now works as the Student Rabbi at the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia.Day of Silence is a national youth movement protesting the marginalization of the LGBTQ+ community. Across the country, LGBTQ+ and ally students take a daylong vow of silence to symbolically represent the silence they face as a result of bullying and harassment. Its held every year in April, and is currently organized by GLSEN. The movement has gone through some rebrands in recent years to meet the emerging needs of LGBTQ+ youth, but first, lets go back to the beginning.The first Day of SilenceBefore students in middle schools and high schools across the country began participating in the national Day of Silence, it began as an idea Pulzetti conceived in 1996 when she was a first-year student at the University of Virginia (UVA). After she came out earlier that school year, Pulzetti joined a student organization called the LGBU, a community for queer students to come together. However, Pulzetti said the organizations initiatives were largely internal with events such as film screenings and panel discussions but they did not necessarily reach the whole campus.Pulzetti along with fellow student Jesse Gilliam received inspirationfromJulian Bond, a UVA professor who previously worked as a civil rights activist and as a government official in Georgia. Bond was a founding member of theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was a group of young, Black college students who participated in nonviolent direct-action protests in the 1960s. This included conducting sit-ins to protest segregation at restaurants and even organizing voter registration campaigns to unlock political power for African Americans. While taking Bonds class, Pulzetti started thinking about ways LGBTQ+ students could make their own impact.I thought, Well, what can we do? There [has to be] nonviolent resistance that would reach more people than were currently teaching. And for whatever reason, I thought of this idea of taking a vow of silence but doing it in a way that would be quite visible, that people would know we were doing it. Otherwise, its not really worth doing.While only 100 people participated in that first Day of Silence, Pulzetti said it was enough to get noticed by the school newspaper, and LGBU even had a table to promote the activity in a heavily trafficked area on campus.We werent faced with a lot of hostility and harassment, and most people were just sort of curious and pretty supportive, Pulzetti said about the general response to that first event. We advised people to let their professors know before class that they would not be speaking, and my experience with general faculty [was that they] were supportive of that. So we were onto something that seemed to sort of strike a chord with people, and that provided a way for talking about silencing and invisibility.Expanding its reachIn the summer of that year, Pulzetti and Gilliam started to wonder whether other colleges would want to participate in Day of Silence. Gilliam then went on to make a website to share information about the direct action. He and Pulzetti then started reaching out to other student groups.We started working with other leaders around the country, and we did that for the rest of the time we were in college, Pulzetti said.More than 100 colleges and universitiesparticipated in 1997.It became really meaningful, because almost immediately, everyone had a million ideas and this has been true ever since then, from that time until now, almost 30 years later, Pulzetti said. The thing about this event is you can customize it to make it work for whatever your particular community needs.For example, students at UVA and beyond also started to organize Breaking the Silence rallies for participants to express themselves and share experiences.Its been gratifying and just exciting to see how young people have taken it in different directions, or added their ideas to it and used it to address their needs in their communities, Pulzetti said.Eventually, the Day of Silence expanded its reach even further when GLSEN became the official organizational sponsor in 2001, two years after Pulzetti and Gilliam graduated from UVA. Pulzetti had a fellowship in Russia shortly after graduation and couldnt participate in efforts with GLSEN but Gilliam held onto it and worked with the organization to put the movement in the national spotlight. GLSEN continues to sponsor the event to this day.Day of (No) SilenceDay of Silence continues to go strong almost 30 years after Pulzetti helped found it but her feelings about that are two-sided.On one hand, I am so gratified that the structure and the idea is a useful vehicle for students to do advising and for schools to do organizing. I think thats fabulous, and I am often quite inspired and excited when April rolls around. I also really wish we didnt have to keep doing it, she said. I really wish that the world had changed enough in the past almost 30 years that there wouldnt be bullying, silencing, homophobia and transphobia in schools.The current political climate has seen numerous attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, particularly nonbinary and trans people, with everything from Dont Say Gay laws to book bans. The current needs of the community ultimately prompted GLSEN to rebrand the movement in 2024 asDayof (No) Silencein opposition to the current attempted erasure of LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender and nonbinary people, from public life. Being silent is no longer an option. Students now use the day to contact their board of education and legislators to stem the tide of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and anti-LGBTQ+ policy, particularly in schools.Pulzetti said she hopes Day of (No) Silence is a useful vehicle for making change, noting her feelings as a parent.Im very concerned about the environment my children are growing up in, and making sure that they and their friends can continue to get health care and will not suffer because of whatever their identities are, she said. Were living in a really, really difficult time, and theres a lot to be concerned about.Continuing to break the silencePulzetti noted the importance of legislators at both local and national levels hearing from youth.Those voices are so powerful, she said. Even when it might feel hopeless, I think a story can still at least change the narrative and help people understand, even if it doesnt change the law itself.While she does think youth voices are powerful, she also understands that some LGBTQ+ youth may not be ready to come out, making their safety and confidentiality a priority. However, there are still others who can speak up on behalf of youth.Allies especially other children who are allies, or their parents or teachers or educators have a really, really important role to play, because its not always safe for the people who are most directly impacted by discrimination to be the ones [to speak up], Pulzetti said.I really think given the political climate right now, some of the greatest needs of our young people [is for us] to affirm their humanity and affirm their access to health care, she added. It feels like were almost sort of like stepping back to the real basics of making sure people can be safe. For instance, when the current administrationtook away the funding for the LGBTQ suicide hotline, thats just so painful, because we know that suicidality isoverrepresented in LGBTQ youth.Pulzetti emphasized the importance of adults especially those who work in fields serving LGBTQ+ youth helping youth access educational resources if their schools are not providing them anymore. She noted that while its not an easy time to be a queer kid due to elected officials attempting to silence the LGBTQ+ community, one thing remains true.Were not going anywhere, Pulzetti said.The post From silence to action: Day of Silence co-founder vows Were not going anywhere appeared first on News Is Out.

Queer horror has given us bloodsuckers, ghosts, killers, and plenty of twists over the last 15 years. These films center LGBTQ+ characters in stories of survival, desire, and of course, fear. These films have also stepped away from negative tropes that once dominated horror films, highlighting queer final girls (of all genders) and not punishing queer and trans characters for their orientation or gender expression. Heres a look at some standout titles and where you can stream them.Vamps, werewolves and other supernatural creaturesGood Manners (2017)Two women, Clara and Ana, form a bond when Clara is hired as a live-in nanny to care for Anas unborn child. As dark secrets emerge, a werewolf-shaped surprise changes everything.Where to watch: TubiBit (2019)A young queer trans woman (Supergirls Nicole Maines) unintentionally joins a coven of vampires on her first week in LA, and must navigate internal politics, identity, and blood rituals as she adapts to her new life.Where to watch: TubiThirst (2019)This Icelandic horror splatter film merges queer desire with ancient vampire mythology, following a woman drawn to a bloodthirsty secret in order to bring back a loved one.Where to watch: TubiHellraiser (2022)The Cenobites are back in this reimagining of the classic Hellraiser lore, featuring Jamie Claytons portrayal of Pinhead. The 2022 film deepens the franchises horror mythos with a fresh take on the curse.Where to watch: HuluGhosts and attachmentsLyle (2014)A lesbian couple moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that hides sinister forces connected to motherhood and the supernatural. A Rosemarys Babystyle nightmare with a queer twist.Where to watch: TubiHuesera: The Bone Woman (2022)A pregnant woman, haunted by a past queer relationship and dire folklore, battles a dark force claiming her motherhood.Where to watch: AMC+/ShudderRift (2017)After a personal tragedy, a gay couple retreat to a remote cabin, only to be haunted by grief and a presence that blurs between supernatural and psychological.Where to watch: TubiBad Things (2023)A horror story set in a snowbound hotel where queer guests face ghosts, vengeance, and eerie interpersonal tension. The twisty film stars Gayle Rankin, Hari Nef and Molly Ringwald.Where to watch: AMC+/ShudderAttachment (2022)Actress Maja and academic Leah meet and fall in love in Denmark, but after Maja suffers a mysterious seizure, the women move to Leahs mothers home in London. While Leah attempts to heal, Maja notices that something isnt quite right in this home or with Leahs devout mother.Where to watch: AMC+/ShudderKnocking (2021)Molly survives a home invasion that kills her girlfriend, and after spending time in a psychiatric hospital, returns to her apartment. She then experiences ghostly contact, an incessant knocking sound and unravels the trauma she hoped was buried.Where to watch: TubiPsycho killersquest-ce que cest?Stranger by the Lake (2013)At a lakeside cruising spot, Franck falls for the handsome Michel, who he later witnesses drowning a man in the lake. Already entangled with Michel, Franck must decide if this relationship will lead to his own demise.Where to watch: Roku Channel/Prime VideoKnife+Heart (2018)Set in Pariss gay porn scene, this giallo horror thriller tracks a masked killer stalking performers as the director-protagonist unravels hidden connections.Where to watch: AMC+/ShudderWhat Keeps You Alive (2018)Newlyweds Jackie and Jules head to a remote cabin to celebrate their first anniversary. When the couple runs into an old friend of Jackies who refers to her as Megan, Jackie begins to unravel. When Jules questions Jackie about a mysterious drowning from her past, all hell breaks loose in this cat and mouse domestic horror.Where to watch: TubiInto the Dark: Midnight Kiss (2019)A New Years Eve party becomes a nightmare for a group of gay friends, with slasher stakes and horrifying twists.Where to watch: HuluHorror comedyBodies Bodies Bodies (2022)Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Senot and Pete Davidson star in this dark comedy about friends who gather for a house party where a murder mystery game turns shockingly real. A sapphic couple becomes entangled in a toxic whodunit as bodies start falling in the dark.Where to watch: NetflixFear Street trilogy (2021)Based on R.L. Stines books, this trilogy follows a group of teens uncovering a centuries-old curse tied to their town. At its heart is a lesbian couple whose relationship drives the story through shifting timelines of 1994, 1978, and 1666.Where to watch: NetflixSummoning Sylvia (2023)A group of friends rents a haunted house for a bachelor party, only to summon a queer ghost with unfinished business. This lighthearted queer horror comedy is mix of campy humor and supernatural hijinks.Where to watch: StarzSissy (2022)Sissy (Aisha Dee) is a wellness influencer who reunites with a childhood friend Emma, and is invited to Emmas bachelorette party. When Sissys grade school bully shows up to the party, old resentments surface and things turn violent. With social media satire and bloody revenge, its a sharp queer slasher.Where to watch: TubiCults, trauma and tales of revengeThelma (2017)Thelma (Eili Harboe) is a young woman from a deeply religious family, on her own for the first time in college in Oslo. She begins to experience unexplained psychogenic seizures. When she meets and falls for another student named Anja, Thelma discovers supernatural powers tied to her desires. In order to heal, Thelma must face her past trauma, including a tragic event that she has forced herself to forget.Where to watch: fuboTV/Apple+The Perfection (2018)After leaving a prestigious music school to take care of her dying mother, Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) meets her replacement Lizzie Wells (Logan Browning). The two musicians form an intense bond, but revenge, music, and body horror twist their relationship into violence and physical transformation.Where to watch: NetflixSpiral (2019)A gay couple and their teenage daughter move to a suburban enclave that hides cultish control, psychological horror, and secrets behind manicured facades.Where to watch: AMC+/ShudderThe Retreat (2021)A lesbian couple goes on a supposed wellness retreat, but they are kidnapped and forced through traumatic ordeals while trying to escape murderers hellbent on killing queer people and live streaming it.Where to watch: YouTube Movies/Apple+Swallowed (2022)Friends Benjamin and Dom are celebrating Bens last night in town before he heads to Los Angeles to work in the gay porn industry. In an attempt to gather some money for Bens trip, the two become involved in a drug smuggling operation. However, when one of the drug filled condoms breaks inside of Dom, the two men discover they are smuggling something much more horrifying.Where to watch: Prime VideoI Saw the TV Glow (2024)In this critically acclaimed film by Jane Schoenbrun, two misfit teens in the 90s bond over a bizarre TV show called The Pink Opaque. When one of the teens disappears, the others grip on reality fractures, entwined with trans identity and supernatural horror.Where to watch: HBO MaxThe post 24 modern queer and trans horror films you can watch this spooky season appeared first on News Is Out.

A harrowing incident Monday night in West Palm Beach, Florida had members of an LGBTQ+ running club fleeing for their lives.Members of the group told police at the scene that a man driving a dark SUV attempted to run them down multiple times at high velocity, sending the runners scrambling through trees looking for cover in a local park. Related Anti-dog man throws sand in trans womans eyes in scary clothing-optional beach attack This car is flying at you. I have never seen a car fly that fast right towards me in my entire life, said Rudolph Galindo, treasurer for the Night Runners club.Galindo recalled how he approached the man earlier in the parking lot to ask if he was there for the groups twice-weekly run. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today He seemed aggravated that I was asking him if he was there for the running group. So, he said no. I just stepped away, Galindo told ABC 25 News.Shortly after, the man attacked, Galindo said.He got into his car, pulled out, accelerating, pedal to the metal and coming right at me where I was standing, Galindo said.He and 40 other terrified runners fled for their lives.Everybody came behind this tree thats right here and also this banyan tree right here to be in a safe spot, Galindo recounted.Tires screeching, the man tore through the parking lot toward the group again.Cell phone video captures the charcoal grey Ford Bronco speeding through the lot as runners scramble for safety around a large banyan tree in the park.We were behind a tree, but at this point, it seemed like he didnt have any limits of what he was wanting to do or willing to do, Galindo said.Their attacker sped through the lot a third time, jumping a curb onto the lawn. Muddy tire tracks chart his path racing over the grass and onto an adjacent boulevard, where he ducked into traffic heading downtown.West Palm Beach police issued an alert for the SUV matching the description that witnesses gave.Police say the man fled a mile and a half down Okeechobee Boulevard and was spotted parking in a garage. They found him removing the vehicles license plate, Fox 29 News reports.Cops took the alleged attacker, Ihab Mustafa El Mahmoud, 43,into custody without incident.West Palm Beach Police charged El Mahmoud with two counts of aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony, and one count of reckless driving.Prosecutors could enhance the charges under Floridas hate crime laws, as investigators try to identify a motive for the terrifying attack.Galindo said hes not sure what his attackers motive was, and if he was just scaring the LGBTQ+ runners or if he really wanted to hurt someone.Its difficult to say. He certainly had the ability to do so, and I dont think he would have been upset if he did hit somebody, Galindo said.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.