Paisley Currah

If only the conservatives on the Supreme Court shared our view.

Kansas invalidated the driver's licenses of hundreds of trans people, made it a crime to drive to the DMV to "correct" them, & started keeping a list of everyone who did so. @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social & I on trans people in the state's surveillance architecture for @donmoyn.bsky.social's substack.

This is it exactly. As @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social and I wrote in a piece out today--even as these states deny the existence of trans identity, they build administrative systems to track us-- an expanding architecture of surveillance and control. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-compl...

It's all in how questions are worded and issues are framed. For example, 64% of respondents hold contradictory opinions on transgender policy. This is why Democrats should lead with a vision, not pander to the Fox News manosphere.

True story—Years ago on Twitter, before Jamelle Bouie joined the Times, I assumed he was trans because I thought (wrongly it turned out) that a cis journalist wouldn’t be posting so much stuff about transphobia.

Yesterday the Supreme Court blocked California policies protecting trans students BUT NY Attorney General Tish James told NYU that its decision to stop trans care for youth may violate the law, so continue doing it. States rights!

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 25A810 ELIZABETH MIRABELLI, ET AL. U. ROB BONTA, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, ET AL. ON APPLICATION TO VACATE INTERLOCUTORY STAY ORDER [March 2, 2026] PER CURIAM. Before us is an application to vacate a Court of Appeals order staying a permanent injunction entered by a District Court on behalf of parents and teachers who claim that certain California policies violate their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The parents object that these policies prevent schools from telling them about their children's efforts to engage in gender transitioning at school unless the children consent to parental notifi-cation. The parents also take issue with California's requirement that schools use children's preferred names and pronouns regardless of their parents' wishes. The teachers object to their compelled participation in the implementation of the State's policies.

When the Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction, the parents and teachers filed this application seeking vacatur of the Ninth Circuit's stay pending appeal. II We grant the application and vacate the stay with respect to the parents because this aspect of the stay is not "justi-fied under the governing four-factor test." Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Serus., 594 U.S. 758, 763 (2021) (per curiam) (citing Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434 (2009)).

NEW: SCOTUS partially grants the request in Mirabelli v. Bonta, relating to California policies protecting against forced outing of trans students by teachers to parents, over the dissent of the Democratic appointees. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Hard-hitting reporting from the Brooklyn College student paper, with firsthand interviews from students & staff on NYU Langone’s latest decision to stop gender-affirming care for minors.https://vanguard.blog.brooklyn.edu/2026/02/nyu-langone-ceases-gender-affirming-care-for-minors-for-a-second-time/

EEOC Issues Federal Sector Appellate Decision Recognizing the Ability of Federal Agencies to Designate Intimate Spaces in Federal Workplaces by Sex WASHINGTON – The U.S.

Trump's anti-trans agenda moving along. Yesterday, the EEOC said that a federal employer can ban trans women from women's bathrooms, trans men from men's bathrooms. The Court's decision in the good 2020 Bostock hadn't addressed bathrooms. shorturl.at/IiWuE

A reminder to those who love their daily wordle but not the Times, there’s always Queerdle queerdle.com

Factually! with a headshot of Adam Conover. February 26, 2026, 1 hour, 10 minutes. The Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah

@adamconover.net has a terrific podcast, and I don't say that just because I'm on it this week. Adam is the polymath of comedians. It's a pleasure to talk to him about trans issues. He's so well informed, one doesn't have to retread the usual talking points, so the conversation goes further.

Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses "The legislature did not include a grace period." ERIN REED FEB 25, 2026 88 5 21 Share Kansas Sate Capitol // farzinvousoughian

1. Numerous transgender people in Kansas are reporting that the state has sent them a letter demanding the immediate surrender of drivers licenses.

Those driving could be arrested, charged, and see privileges revoked.

Subscribe to support our journalism.

www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

Factually! with Adam Conover February 25, 2026 Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah Why is it that the anti-trans movement is so ferociously set on upending the livelihood of people who are simply trying to live their lives? As it turns out, it’s because it’s part of a larger playbook to dismantle civil rights as we know them. Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, and the writer of an essential new essay in the New York Review Books titled The Anti-Trans Playbook. Today Paisley joins Adam to discuss how we must approach the ongoing attacks on trans rights in America. 

I always enjoy talking to @adamconover.net, the polymath of comedians.
headgum.com/factually-wi...

The insular world of Melania Trump is a microcosm of the country Trump is presiding over in his second term. In Trump’s America, tech bros invent apps, like Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, that “nudify” and sexualize images of women and children without their consent and direct the deepfake sexual assaults where the user requests, including the victims’ social media accounts. This is a nation in which pregnant women who miscarry are prosecuted—or allowed to die—lest they be seeking an abortion, while the president’s Nazi podcaster pal Nick Fuentes declares, to an audience in the hundreds of thousands, that they should be sent to “the breeding gulags.” It is the world of Jeffrey Epstein, where women and girls serve as personal accessories, interior décor, and instruments of gratification, and the powerful, wealthy, white men they are compelled to serve are protected from legal accountability, or even embarrassment.

@judith-levine.bsky.social watched Melania so we don't have to. Techbros, Fuentes, Epstein and Musk: On women in Trumpland. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

in addition to evoking the "deceiver" trope (he "fell prey" to trans/LGBTQ+ ppl), Newsom is the LEAST CULTURALLY NORMAL prominent Dem politician right now. he owns a winery. he married Kimberly Guilfoyle. when they split up he dated 19-year-old (when he was 38). he podcasts w/Steve Bannon, etc.

There seem to be 2 paths here:
(1) Class becomes a conversation between LLMs
(2) Digital tools are removed from the classroom altogether

The hidden ICE blueprint that should horrify every American | Will Bunch An internal Department of Homeland Security document shows how ICE plans to cram thousands of detained human beings inside a Georgia warehouse.

What's more shocking than ICE's plan to cram as many 8,500 humans into massive, soul-crushing warehouses?

Seeing the actual DHS floor plan that echoes slavery ships and history's worst gulags with no rec space but a gun range for guards

My new column on the camps www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-...

The SAVE Act is Christian Nationalism in Action Gendered Burdens and the Right to Vote

With the SAVE act, Republicans want to make it more difficult for married women who have changed their name to vote—and that is more likely to be Republican women. Seems counterintuitive but not if the long term goal is repealing the 19th A. By Pamela Herd. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Maybe I’ll just keep posting this every time we learn of another violation of our 1st amendment rights (from our actual government) to remind us of the 152 prominent writers who were so bothered by “cancel culture” (post #metoo and #blm that they wrote an open letter about it back in 2020.

and making decisions that have a big symbolic or ideological impact, without thinking through the practical manifestations. I would compare it to DOGE, like, 'We’re doing this to show that we are anti-woke.'" 3/3

"once they dissolved the Faculty Council, it became the kind of decision-making process that we’re familiar with on the state and federal levels right now – suspending norms and due process...2/

News UT Head of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Speaks Out Lisa Moore defends the value of ethnic and gender studies Avatar photo by Brant Bingamon February 19, 2026

DOGE comes to higher ed: Proud of my friend @lisalmoore.bsky.social, of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UT Austin, who does not pull her punches, on demoting WGS and other "woke" departments. www.austinchronicle.com/news/ut-head... 1/

Sonia Sodha * @soniasodha X.com Scrapping the Equality Act would leave the door open to all kinds of terrible discrimination. A retrograde move that would take Britain back to the 1950s/60s, pre equality legislation. There's no public support for that. Tue Trades Union Congress @ @The_TUC• 9h BREAKING E I Reform announce plans to legalise discrimination. Plans include scrapping the Equality Act, which would legalise discrimination against a worker if they were a woman, disabled, black,... Show more 16:49 • 17/02/2026 • 23K Views

More than almost anyone else Sodha’s faux-reasonable anti-trans diatribes in the Guardian - claiming *concern* about women’s rights - contributed to undermining the Equality Act.

If Reform gets in cis women will lose every gain they fought for since the 1960s, thanks to “journalists” like her.

1/3

Better to be a beard than a sacrificial lamb, but we can do better.

Newsom turns on trans people, part of an agenda whose primary aim is to protect billionaires

Neoliberal Dems of the 20teens helped trans people, a progressive sheen on a political project aimed mostly at …protecting billionaires

Bans on puberty blockers, hormones…and now haircuts that don’t align with gender norms? The anti-trans agenda was always lurching toward this.

Also, only the Atlantic could so absolutely contort a foundation giving money away as having a "monopoly."

Epstein Family Values 14.02.2026 Argument The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants. [Image of Musk, Epstein and Weinstein.

Read Melinda Cooper on Epstein and the tech bros: primal fathers, the backlash against #MeTo, and the return of master-servant relationship. (One has to create a free account to read) www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Thank you. You mean 100,000 negative articles or from right wing sources? Or both?

And if you want a 5500 word deep dive into the connections between the Trump administration’s anti-trans positions and the rollback of feminism, read this. (DM if you can’t get beyond the paywall) www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why Joan Wallach Scott

Guardian piece by the redoubtable Joan Scott explaining the connections between Trump’s Defending Women EO and shutting down women’s and gender studies prograns. archive.is/2026.02.13-1...