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I am furious! Not mildly irritated. Not disappointed by another questionable government decision. Furious! The Trump administration eliminated the specialized LGBTQ+ youth services within the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in 2025. Congress forced the issue by directing the federal government to restore those services and providing $33.1 million to do it. Now, as that service is being rebuilt,…

There are political defeats, there are landslides, and then there is what happened to Jadon MacCormack in Connecticut on August 11. Ninety votes. That is what Republican voters gave a candidate who reportedly wanted LGBTQ people stripped of marriages, stripped of their children, driven from schools, subjected again to criminal laws governing consensual relationships and, at the farthest edge of…

Transgender History Month Is About More Than Remembering Names Every August, Transgender History Month offers an opportunity to recover lives that American history has too often compressed into footnotes, sanitized into comfortable stories, or ignored altogether. Sylvia Rivera deserves something far better than any of those treatments. Rivera was poor. She was Latina. She was…

Hello everyone, My name is JT Santana. I am an independent writer, LGBTQ+ advocate, and longtime member of the community. I am currently researching a long-form article (approximately 20,000+ words) about the physical, emotional, medical, and social realities of a transgender person’s transition. I want to make something clear from the beginning: I am not transgender. I am a gay man whose…

Iowa’s 2026 Race for Governor Requires More Than Branding, Slogans, and Selective Outrage Iowa voters face an unusually consequential choice in the November 3, 2026, gubernatorial election. Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand is running against Republican businessman and farmer Zach Lahn for an open governor’s office after Governor Kim Reynolds declined to seek another term. Sand presents himself…

Consent Separates Labor From Exploitation, Trafficking, and Abuse Content warning: This article directly discusses consensual adult sex work, prostitution, human trafficking, rape, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, coercion, exploitation, addiction, and incarceration. It defends the validity of consensual adult sex work and names the profound difference between paid sexual services and sexual…

Constitutional rights are often tested when they protect unpopular speech, controversial religious beliefs, or politically divisive issues. The Second Amendment is no different. Many Americans, including thoughtful supporters of stronger gun regulation, may strongly disagree with the recent decision by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix regarding portions of the National Firearms Act (NFA).…

There are moments when a community discovers what it truly values. Those moments rarely arrive beneath stage lights or surrounded by rainbow balloons. They arrive after the music stops, the temporary fencing comes down, the corporate logos disappear, and the organizations doing the daily work quietly admit that they may not have enough money to remain open. That moment has arrived in the Quad…

A program-integrity crisis became a checkout-line morality play, with poor people cast as the suspects and government agencies treated like innocent bystanders As someone who receives SNAP, I have spent months watching politicians perform outrage over soda, candy, cake, sports drinks, chewing gum, and whatever else they decide poor people have not earned the right to enjoy. The script is always…

Texas Judge Dianne Hensley wants the public to believe her federal lawsuit is about religious liberty. Strip away the pious language, the carefully selected grievance, and the victim costume, and the demand becomes much uglier. Hensley wants the privilege of serving opposite-sex couples under the authority of public office, collecting money for those ceremonies, and rejecting same-sex couples at…

There is a particular kind of political obscenity in making people calculate whether honesty is safe. It happens when a worker pauses before mentioning a spouse, when a patient edits an answer on an intake form, and when a parent keeps quiet at a school meeting rather than risk making a child the next target. No police raid is required. Fear performs the work quietly, one withheld name and one…

Lindsey Graham is dead. His office announced that the South Carolina senator died Saturday evening following a brief and sudden illness, just two days after his 71st birthday. No further information about the illness was immediately released. Graham had served in Congress since 1995, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate beginning in 2003. (⁠AP News) There will be…

Finding a social justice publication that grounds lived experience in regional reporting or youth-focused campaigns feels like herding cats in an echo chamber. Many directories rehash generic national outlets or spotlight sites too hopelessly academic to use in local campaigns. You can identify sources with usable essays, actionable toolkits, or hands-on editorial support that match your advocacy…

A community activism strategies checklist is a structured set of steps that guides organizers through planning, executing, and sustaining local advocacy campaigns with real, measurable impact. Without one, campaigns drift. They confuse visibility with leverage, mistake a big crowd for actual power, and run out of steam before decision-makers feel any pressure. The field of community engagement…