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Subscribe nowAll of us at Uncloseted Media extend our deepest and sincerest thanks to Paul Austin for his transformational financial support.At a time when the LGBTQ community and the freedom of the press are under attack and misinformation is rampant, being able to operate as a nonprofit newsroom allows Uncloseted Media to remain independent and focused on the journalism.Pauls generosity has empowered us to grow our team and expand our mission: delivering objective, nonpartisan LGBTQ journalism that holds power to account, investigates Americas growing anti-LGBTQ ecosystem, and elevates the voices of everyday heroes across the country and beyond.Paul shared a powerful statement that speaks to the urgency of our mission:Thanks to Pauls belief in our vision, Uncloseted is rapidly growing and we are able to produce rigorous journalism at a time when visibility, truth and holding bad actors and institutions to account is critical. As I wrote in last weeks newsletter, I truly believe the future of local and issue-driven journalism will be fueled by philanthropy.Thank you, Paul, for helping us illuminate the stories that too often go ignored and for standing with us in building a bold, independent nonprofit newsroom.With profound and enduring gratitude,The Uncloseted Media TeamSubscribe for LGBTQ-focused, accountability journalism.Subscribe nowDemocratic NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Is Pledging $65 Million for Trans Health Care (Them)The Democratic socialist cruised to victory against former governor Andrew Cuomo in Tuesdays primary.75 People Arrested in Indonesia After Police Raid on Gay Party (PinkNews)Indonesian police confirmed 23 June that they conducted the raid on a gathering the day before in the city of Bogor, which is near the countrys capital city, Jakarta.Transgender Representation in Public Office Has Skyrocketed (Axios)Transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming representation in public office has soared by 1,800% since 2017, a report released Wednesday found.New York Times cited 29 times to justify decision limiting trans healthcare (The Objective)Meanwhile, other mainstream media newsrooms treated the U.S. v. Skrmetti case as an opportunity to center coverage around the expected result.Chicago Could Become First Airport in the U.S. to Have a Gay Bar (Out)A proposal to open this gay bar at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport has already been submitted.Dozens Attend 'Hetero Awesome Fest' in Idaho (KTVB)A minor confrontation erupted as a protester took the stage after organizers said he lied to staff about his intentions.Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: Following last weeks Supreme Court decision upholding a Tennessee law that bans minors from accessing gender-affirming healthcare in the state, we spoke with five trans youth across the U.S. to get their reactions to the ruling, which could set a precedent to protect similar bans in 26 other states. Nico DiAlessandro offers a track record for America First Legal, a foundation that has spearheaded dozens of anti-LGBTQ lawsuits and is headed by Homeland Security Advisor and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.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

Nature, Published online: 26 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02017-8Research across science and medicine will probably shrink at one of the worlds most elite universities amid a new political reality.

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by Adam Friedman, Tennessee Lookout This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with Tennessee Lookout . Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. ProPublica and the Tennessee Lookout are continuing to investigate Harpeth Financial, which owns Flex Loan operator Advance Financial and online sportsbook Action 247. To tell us about the experience you had with either or both companies, call or text reporter Adam Friedman at 615-249-8509. Jeanette Thomas had just made her first payment on a loan from payday lender Advance Financial when she said the company emailed her with good news. She could borrow $206 more. The solicitation was a relief to Thomas, a 62-year-old grandmother who had already exhausted the $783 disability check she receives each month since her health conditions render her unable to work. Over the next few months, Thomas made the required minimum payments on what started in 2019 as a $400 loan to buy Christmas presents. But each time she did so, the company invited her to borrow almost all of the payment back, she said, with emails or letters like Access Your Cash Today or Youre Already Approved.They kept trying to rope me in, Thomas said.In the months that followed, the company continued to expand her credit, allowing Thomas to borrow close to $1,600 in total. In the emails and letters that Thomas kept, Advance never stated how much it would cost if she continued to reborrow. Thomas had read her original loan documents warning that the loan carried a high 279.5% interest rate and would be challenging to pay off. But as the loan balance grew, Thomas came to realize she was trapped. By the spring of 2021, Thomas had paid Advance almost $4,000, yet she still owed more than $1,000 and was paying more than $200 a month to cover the interest, depleting the disability checks that were her only source of income.Until the Flex Loan, reborrowing or rolling over payday loans was against the law. Tennessee lawmakers first banned reborrowing when they passed the states payday lending law in 1997. They reaffirmed that protection in 2011 when they updated that law.When Tennessee lawmakers passed a 2014 law allowing Flex Loans, they included no such provision. Instead, the bills sponsor, current House Speaker Cameron Sexton, said the loans could be better for borrowers because it required them to make a monthly minimum payment that covered all fees, interest and 3% of the principal. This key provision would ensure that borrowers would always be paying down the principal on the loan.Thomas and more than a dozen borrowers told the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica that Advance has encouraged them through emails and notifications to borrow back the value of almost all of the payments they made, tearing a hole in the safety net the law tried to put in place. All but one of the 14 borrowers who spoke to the newsrooms for this story reported having reborrowed at least once as part of their Advance loan. As with Thomas, Advance made them eligible to borrow more shortly after paying, even though they were often making the minimum payments and almost immediately borrowing the money back to cover the cost of the payment they just made. Advance went on to sue 12 of these borrowers once they stopped being able to afford the loan. Advance Financial sent ads to several borrowers telling them they were eligible to borrow more. (Obtained by Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica. Highlighted and redacted by ProPublica.) Andrea Heady, 45, was sued by Advance in Knoxville for over $7,300, despite having paid the company nearly double what she ultimately borrowed. She initially took out $750 through a Flex Loan after the hours at her university job were slashed in June 2020.Ive always sent money home to my mom, who was taking care of Headys sister, she said. It was COVID. My aunt and uncle were very sick, then they passed away and I just needed money.Heady said Advance would send her notifications letting her know she could borrow more. One email appeared as a financial statement, but included in bold and large text was the amount she had available to borrow. The statement did not provide a payment schedule, a new loan amount, the total cost of the loan or how long it would take to pay off making minimum payments, information a lender would have been required to provide if she'd been borrowing on a credit card. Andrea Heady reborrowed on her Flex Loan over a dozen times after receiving notifications from Advance saying that she could borrow more. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Heady reborrowed on her Flex Loan over a dozen times over the next 18 months as Advance increased her credit limit seven times. She stopped paying when her monthly payments of $650 equaled a quarter of her paycheck. Heady hoped the company would forget about her, but it didnt. In 2024 Advance sued and won a wage garnishment against her. Ultimately, Heady will end up paying Advance over $14,000 on the $3,850 she borrowed. David Hill, a 36-year-old from Nashville, started by borrowing $175 from Advance in February 2020. Each month he would repay the full borrowed amount, including interest and fees, and reborrow the principal, often on the same or next day. Over 18 months, he reborrowed almost 80 times.COVID happened and I was going through financial trouble, Hill said. I would get a check and pay it off. But then I would have to borrow it back to have money. David Hill received emails from Advance encouraging him to borrow more money, which he ultimately did almost 80 times. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Via email, Advance kept increasing his credit limit and encouraging him to borrow more. Dear David, started two of the emails, which contained notes like good news you have $645 available. Hill eventually reached a point where he couldnt afford the minimum payment, totaling over $400 a month. He stopped paying and the company sued him in 2023 for over $4,700.The Lookout and ProPublica sent detailed questions to Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial. Earnest repeated what he said in a previous statement, that the company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. He added that the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions has received just 91 complaints about flexible credit lenders since 2020, representing less than 0.001% of all new flex loan agreements, and that this data reflects the satisfaction of the vast majority of Advances customers. The Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica previously reported that the company has sued over 110,000 Tennesseeans since it began offering the Flex Loan in 2015, making it one of the largest single plaintiffs in the state. One of the subjects in that story reborrowed on her Flex Loan over a dozen times, turning $4,400 in borrowed cash into more than $12,500 in payments to Advance. The company sued her and won a judgment that led to the garnishment of her wages. Christopher Peterson, a senior official with the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2012 to 2016 and a contributor to multiple reports about payday loans, said the agency sought to limit reborrowing on payday and title loans because the desire to borrow again often indicated that borrowers couldnt afford the loans and would be paying them off forever. That is especially true of the Flex Loan in Tennessee, he said. Its a nasty loan, he said. A Better Loan?The CFPB began targeting high-interest lenders in 2013, releasing a report on the dangers of payday loans and how reborrowing often led to debt traps. With the threat of federal regulation looming, Advance Financial Chairman Michael Hodges started working with Tennessee lawmakers to create a new type of high-interest loan that would avoid federal oversight, he told the Nashville Business Journal. In Tennessees state House, Advance and other high-interest lenders turned to Sexton to sponsor the legislation.Sexton was then the majority whip, a position typically reserved for ambitious state House members hoping to travel up the partys ranks. Sexton also knew banking. He worked at a local bank as a business development executive, a position he still holds today, along with having a seat on its board. Cameron Sexton, now the speaker of the Tennessee House, sponsored the Flex Loan legislation in 2014. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Starting in the spring of 2014, Sexton began guiding Flex Loan legislation through Tennessees state House committees. On the surface, the bill appeared to be a new type of loan with a 24% interest rate, which would be significantly cheaper than the triple-digit interest on payday and title loans. But the actual cost could be found in the bills details, which gave lenders the right to charge a 0.7% daily customary fee, which over a year adds another 255.5%.Official video recordings from legislative committee hearings show that neither legislators nor Sexton discussed reborrowing or the loans interest rate. When Sexton took to the Tennessee House floor in April 2014, his colleagues showed him deference because of his banking experience, said former Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, a rural West Tennessee Democrat and the minority leader at the time, who sponsored the original payday lending legislation in 1997.During the hearing, Fitzhugh asked Sexton if he thought the soon-to-be-created Flex Loan was a step up for consumers compared to payday and title loans. Sexton said that was a fair statement.When a lawmaker asked about the interest rate, Sexton said it was 190% to 210%, which is lower than the actual rate. But Sexton once again assured lawmakers that the minimum payment would reduce the cost of the loan for consumers. When you reduce the principal each and every month, obviously youre decreasing the amount of interest, Sexton said from the House floor.The Flex Loan legislation passed the Tennessee House 83-6, with Fitzhugh abstaining from the vote. Fitzhugh said the high-interest lending landscape in Tennessee has only gotten worse over the past decade because of Flex Loans. Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat, said she regrets voting for the Flex Loan legislation and feels like proponents of the legislation misled her.I definitely would not vote that way today, and would like to work to fix that massive mistake thats hurt so many Tennesseans, Johnson said. A spokesperson for Sexton did not respond to questions from Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica. Since passing the Flex Loans bill in 2014, Sexton has received over $105,000 in contributions to his campaign and political action committee from Advance Financial and its affiliated PACs, making them one of his largest contributors. No Money for FoodOver five years after the law passed, Jeanette Thomas walked into an Advance Financial store three weeks before Christmas 2019 and filled out an application.Thomas said she listed her income, gave them her debit card number and permission to directly charge her bank account the required monthly minimum payment. A borrower isnt required to put up any assets, like a car or future paycheck, to get a Flex Loan. Thomas wound up in a debt trap, borrowing again and again to keep herself afloat. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had tried to restrict reborrowing to protect consumers from falling into this kind of hole. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Unlike some other borrowers, Advance allowed Thomas to pay monthly, instead of biweekly, because thats how she received her federal disability benefits. Thomas said she suffered physical abuse for decades that left her with a traumatic brain injury.The company deposited $400 into her account the same day she walked into the store. At the time of the loan, Thomas had been trying to build a better relationship with her two sons and three grandchildren. She used the money to purchase gift cards, art supplies and toys. She was happy to be able to give her family something for the holidays. Thomas first minimum payment to Advance was due Dec. 31 and was a manageable $51.78. That December had been cold, and when Thomas heat bill came in $50 higher than normal, she started to worry. Then, just two days after her loan payment, Thomas said an unsolicited email arrived from Advance telling her she was eligible to borrow $206 more. Thomas thought she could afford it. Why would Advance loan her money she couldnt pay back, she said she thought. What Thomas did not realize was her first bill had only been for a 13-day payment period, meaning shed been charged less than two weeks of interest. By taking the additional loan for an entire month, her monthly payment would almost triple to $130 per month. Over the next two months, the company offered her a lifeline, extending her credit limit enough that she could make her payments with the money shed just borrowed. Eventually, Advance stopped increasing her credit limit and her monthly payment had increased to $230 a month, almost a third of her disability check.Thomas cut her spending to the bone, hoping that a few months of payments would get her out of debt. She turned to friends to help pay for food, and to a local church to cover her utility bill. Thomas said Advance sent her mailers and emails multiple times a month, offering to let her borrow any of the principal she had paid off. She tried to resist, but inevitably, she would have an unexpected expense, like medical bills from a series of mini strokes. Thomas found herself in the position the CFPB had warned about when it sought to restrict reborrowing. Former CFPB official Peterson, whos now a law professor at the University of Utah, helped work on the agencys 2017 payday regulations. At the time, the agency wrote that consumers who reborrowed would inevitably be forced to choose between making an unaffordable payment on the loan or paying for necessities like food or rent.By May 2021, Thomas could no longer afford to pay. The company kept her loan open and unpaid for 90 days, allowing the interest and fees to accumulate, nearly doubling the amount due to $1,700. Advance then charged Thomas two times in one week, withdrawing $430, or half of her monthly budget.I can remember just lying in my bed, stomach hurting and doubled over in pain because I couldnt get something to eat, Thomas said. Not knowing where to turn for help, Thomas filed a complaint with the Tennessee attorney generals Division of Consumer Affairs. In her complaint, she wrote that Advance needs to stop abusing their power. Now I cannot pay my rent, she said. The state investigated the case and took no action. By October 2022, Advance noted on one of Thomass monthly bills that it had written off her loan and closed her account. Unlike the other 110,000 Tennesseans who fell behind in their payments, Advance hasnt sued Thomas, whose federal benefits are protected from garnishment. The company also agreed in a letter to the state to cease all communications with Thomas, but Advance continues to send bills requesting a minimum payment of $226.49. Thomas continues to receive bills requesting a minimum payment of $226.49 years after closing her account with Advance Financial. (Obtained by Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica. Highlighted by ProPublica.) Mollie Simon contributed research.

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by Margaret Coker, The Current This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Current. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Congressional Republicans, looking for ways to offset their proposed tax cuts, are seeking to mandate that millions of Americans work in order to receive federally subsidized health insurance. The GOP tax and budget bill passed the House in May, and Senate Republicans are working feverishly to advance their draft of federal spending cuts in the coming days.Georgia, the only state with a Medicaid work mandate, started experimenting with the requirement on July 1, 2023. As the Medicaid programs two-year anniversary approaches, Georgia has enrolled just a fraction of those eligible, a result health policy researchers largely attribute to bureaucratic hurdles in the states work verification system. As of May 2025, approximately 7,500 of the nearly 250,000 eligible Georgians were enrolled, even though state statistics show 64% of that group is working. Gov. Brian Kemp has long advocated for Medicaid reform, arguing that the country should move away from government-run health care. His spokesperson also told The Current and ProPublica that the program, known as Georgia Pathways to Coverage, was never designed to maximize enrollment.Health care analysts and former state Medicaid officials say Georgias experience shows that the congressional bill, if it becomes law, would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in administrative costs as it is implemented while threatening health care for nearly 16 million people.Heres how proposed federal work requirements compare to Georgias and how they may impact your state: How will states determine who is eligible? What Congress proposes:The House bill, H.R. 1, and draft Senate proposal require all states to verify that Americans ages 19 through 64 who are receiving Medicaid-funded health coverage are spending 80 hours a month working, training for a job, studying or volunteering. These new verification systems would need to be in place by Dec. 31, 2026, and would have to check on enrolled residents work status twice a year. That means people who already receive coverage based on their income level would need to routinely prove their eligibility or lose their insurance.The federal work requirements would apply to more than 10 million low-income adults with Medicaid coverage as well as approximately 5 million residents of the 40 states that have accepted federal subsidies for people to purchase private health coverage through whats commonly known as Obamacare.The House bill exempts parents with children under 18 from the new requirements, while the Senate version exempts parents with children under 15. Neither bill exempts people who look after elderly relatives.Georgias experience:Georgias mandate applies to fewer categories of people than the proposed federal legislation would. Even so, officials failed to meet the states tough monthly verification requirement for Pathways enrollees due to technical glitches and difficulty confirming the employment of those who work in the informal economy such as house cleaners and landscapers because they may not have pay stubs or tax records. The challenges were steep enough that Georgia has decided to loosen its work verification protocols from monthly to once a year.What this means for your state:The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 1 would result in at least 10 million low-income Americans losing health insurance. Health care advocates say thats not because they arent working, but because of the bureaucratic hoops they would need to jump through to prove employment. Research from KFF, a health policy think tank, shows that the vast majority of people who would be subject to the new law already work, are enrolled in school or are unpaid stay-at-home caregivers, duties that restrict their ability to earn a salary elsewhere.Arkansas is the only state other than Georgia to have implemented work requirements. Republican state lawmakers later changed their minds after data showed that red tape associated with verifying eligibility resulted in more than 18,000 people losing coverage within the first few months of the policy. A federal judge halted the program in 2019, ruling that it increased the states uninsured rate without any evidence of increased employment. House Speaker Mike Johnson (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP) House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, says Medicaid work requirements in H.R. 1 are common sense. He says the policy wont result in health coverage losses for the Americans whom Medicaid was originally designed to help because the work requirements wont apply to these groups: children, pregnant women and elderly people living in poverty. He points to the $344 billion in a decades worth of projected cost savings resulting from Medicaid work requirements as beneficial to the nations fiscal health. You find dignity in work, and the people that are not doing that, were going to try to get their attention, he said earlier this year. Who will pay for the work verification system in each state? What Congress proposes:The House bill allocates $100 million to help states pay for verification systems that determine someones eligibility. The grants would be distributed in proportion to each states share of Medicaid enrollees subject to the new requirements an amount health policy experts say will not be nearly enough. States, they say, will be on the hook for the difference.Georgias experience:In the two years since launching its experiment with work requirements, Georgia has spent nearly $100 million in mostly federal funds to implement Pathways. Of that, $55 million went toward building a digital system to verify participants eligibility more than half the amount House Republicans allocated for the entire country to do the same thing.Like other states, Georgia already had a work verification system in place for food stamp programs, but it contracted with Deloitte Consulting to handle its new Medicaid requirements. Georgia officials said the state has spent 30% more than they had expected to create its digital platform for Pathways due to rising consultant and IT costs. Deloitte previously declined to answer questions about its Pathways work.What this means for your state:All states already verify work requirements for food stamp recipients, but many existing systems would need upgrades to conform to proposed federal legislation, according to three former state Medicaid officials. In 2019, when states last considered work requirements, a survey by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office showed that Kentucky expected administrative costs to top $200 million double what H.R. 1 has allocated for the country. Rep. Buddy Carter (Justin Taylor/The Current GA/CatchLight Local) Rep. Buddy Carter, the Republican who represents coastal Georgia and chairs the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which had recommended Medicaid cuts in H.R. 1, said that upfront costs borne by states would be offset by longer-term savings promised in the House bill. Some congressional Republicans concede that the cost savings will come from fewer people enrolling in Medicaid due to the new requirements. Savings from work mandates amount to 43% of the $793 billion in proposed Medicaid cuts, according to the Congressional Budget Office. How will states staff the program? What Congress proposes:Medicaid is a federal social safety net program that is administered differently in each state. Neither H.R. 1 nor the Senate legislative proposal provides a blueprint for how states should verify eligibility or how the costs of overseeing the new requirements will be paid.Georgias experience:Georgias experience shows that state caseworkers are key to managing applications and work requirement verifications for residents eligible for Medicaid. The agency that handles enrollment in federal benefits had a staff vacancy rate of approximately 20% when Georgia launched its work requirement policy in 2023. Georgia at the time had one of the longest wait times for approving federal benefits. As of March, the agency had a backlog of more than 5,000 Pathways applications. The agency has said it will need 300 more caseworkers and IT upgrades to better manage the backlog, according to a report submitted to state lawmakers in June.What this means for your state:Former state Medicaid officials and health policy experts say Georgias staffing struggles are not unique. In 2023, near the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, KFF surveyed states about staffing levels for caseworkers who verify eligibility for federal benefits, including Medicaid. Worker vacancy rates exceeded 10% in 16 of the 26 states that responded; rates exceeded 20% in seven of those states.Adding caseworkers will mean higher costs for states. Currently, 41 states require a balanced budget, meaning that those state legislators would either need to increase taxes and revenues to verify Medicaid enrollees are working or lower enrollment to reduce costs, said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown Universitys Center for Children and Families.In about half a dozen large states where county governments administer federal safety net programs, the costs of training caseworkers on the new verification protocols could trickle from states to counties.There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told reporters in June of the costs facing her state to meet the House bill requirements.

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Alan Mathison Turing wasnt just the gay mathematician and computer scientist who helped defeat the Nazis during World War II by cracking their Enigma code he was also a close friend to gay fellow British mathematician Norman Routledge.During Turings life, the two shared personal correspondences, academic paper drafts, and offprints rare, specialty excerpts from publications gifted between fellow academics and scholars, Popular Science reported. After Routledges death in 2013, the documents were moved into the London home of Routledges sister they stayed there for nearly a decade. Related Controversial Alan Turing sculpture unveiled in England The father of modern computing was a gay man. Does this sculpture capture his importance? However, the papers were rediscovered by Routledges nieces and nephews who had been told to clear out the home and to decide which items should go to the shredder and which ones shouldnt. The relatives found that several of the documents had been signed A.M. Turing. Suspecting their value, they sent the documents to Jim Spencer, director of Rare Books Auctions, a U.K. specialist in rare books. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Nothing couldve prepared me for what I was about to find in that carrier bag, Spencer said in the auctions announcement. These seemingly plain papersperfectly preserved in the muted colours of their unadorned, academic wrappersrepresent the foundations of computer science and modern digital computing.In my heart, I knew it was the most important collection Id ever handled, so I gave it my all, he said, adding that he lost sleep the night before the auction, worried that no one would bid on them he was wrong.Though the documents had been valued at $53,800 to $80,700, the papers ended up raising nearly five times that amount. Turings 1936 paper On Computable Numbers sold for $279,912 alone, Popular Science reported.The greatest weight of responsibility for me was doing justice to the people involved: Alan Turing, his mother, and his good friend Norman Routledge, Spencer said.The human drama behind these papers was so captivating, and I wanted the spotlight to be on their lives as much as the papers themselves, regardless of monetary value, he added. The whole experience, from research to sale, has been something Ill cherish for the rest of my life. Alan Turings persecution, death, and eventual redemptionAfter World War II, in 1952, Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency because he admitted to having a relationship with a man who burgled his house. As punishment for his conviction, Turing was forced to undergo chemical castration by taking synthetic estrogen for a year.The medication rendered himimpotentand causedhim to develop gynecomastia, the enlargement of his breast tissue. On June 8, 1954, Turing died fromcyanide poisoning at the age of 41. Legal authorities ruled his death a suicide.He has since been recognized as one of the fathers of modern computer science: He designed one of the earliest computers, was hailed as a trailblazer in cryptography (codebreaking), and his theories laid the groundwork for the modern development of artificial intelligence. The British governmentformally apologized for its treatment of Turing, and Queen Elizabeth II officially pardoned him in 2013. One of his personal notebooks fetched over $1 million at a 2015 auction. In 2021, the Bank of England released the design for a new 50 bill that features Turings portrait. Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

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by Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. What HappenedSenators this week called for a federal investigation into the Trump administrations killing of hundreds of contracts for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Angus King, a Maine independent, wrote to the agencys inspector general on Monday asking for an investigation into the administrations cancellation of the contracts and the consequences for veterans. The senators highlighted damning reporting from ProPublica on the cancellations, including how the Department of Government Efficiency used an artificial intelligence tool that marked contracts as MUNCHABLE.The senators wrote that DOGEs use of AI to scrutinize contracts adds an entire new level of unease connected to the decision-making, security, governance, and quality control of the entire process. VA officials have said theyve killed nearly 600 contracts after DOGEs review but have declined requests by lawmakers and ProPublica for details. Despite repeated requests in letters to the Secretary, questions at hearings, and dozens of emails to VA officials, the senators wrote, the Department has not provided a single briefing or a complete and accurate list of the contracts it has cancelled. Blumenthal and King wrote that the VA shared a list of contracts in May, but it was riddled with errors and inaccuracies.What They SaidAmid the administrations stonewalling, Blumenthal said in a statement, ProPublicas reporting revealed these cancelled contracts were delivering essential services to veterans and exposed the cruel and dumb AI formulas DOGE bros used to cancel contracts.Blumenthal added, Veterans and all Americans deserve transparency around decisions being made at VA. BackgroundAs ProPublica detailed, a DOGE staffer with no background in government or health care created the AI tool used to mark contracts as munchable. Among the contracts that were tagged and later killed was one to maintain a gene sequencing device for improving cancer treatment. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. And a third was to help measure and improve nursing care. In another story, we reported how VA doctors and other staffers across the country have raised alarms about how the killing of contracts could threaten veterans care. In internal emails, hospital staffers warned about canceled contracts to maintain cancer registries, where information on the treatment of patients is collected and analyzed. DOGE had marked one such contract for immediate termination. Why it MattersThe VA is one of the nations largest health care providers, charged with the care of more than 9 million veterans. President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize former service members. We love our veterans, he said in February. We are going to take good care of them.The administration has reiterated that stance even as the VA has been shedding employees and contracts. Amid the cutbacks, Trumps pick to run the agency, Secretary Doug Collins, said earlier this year, Veterans are going to notice a change for the better. ResponseThe VA has not responded to our request for comment about the senators letter. Previously, press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that decisions to cancel or reduce the size of contracts are made after multiple reviews by VA employees, including agency contracting experts and senior staff. He also said the VA has not canceled contracts that provide services to veterans or work that the agency cannot do itself without a contingency plan in place.

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