Two Democrat lawmakers are breaking down barriers to legal gender changes

Much of the narrative around the early Trump presidency has revolved around how active he has been, signing over 60 executive orders in his first ten days alone. However, some Democratic lawmakers at the local level are matching speed with speed, shortening the process for trans residents to update their government documentation.

Into

Trump’s federal firings imperil government services from cities to farm towns

The full impact of the terminations will not be fully known for weeks or months, and some job losses may be reversed or challenged by law. At least one agency, the Department of Energy, paused some cuts to assess their effect on nuclear defense programs, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Still, workers said basic functions at many agencies are slowing almost immediately and could break down as critical colleagues are shown the door.

The Washington Post (Edit)

Those of us who work in gender medicine are not going anywhere

Those of us who work in gender medicine are not going anywhere

The Minnesota Star Tribune

The Opposition Is Already Growing

Trump is getting substantial pushback, both from the courts and from other pockets of civic life.

The Atlantic (Gift)

Protests are set to take place on Presidents Day. Here is why

These demonstrations are being organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement.” The protests are a response to what organizers describe as “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.” This marks the second nationwide protest by the group, following an event held on Feb. 5.

NPR

A Marine vet thought he found a ‘home’ working at the VA. Now he’s one of 1,000 fired.

Marine veteran Andrew Lennox, who was let go Thursday, said, “I feel like someone from outside of our family is trying to tell us how to run it and telling me I don’t belong, and that’s really angered me.”

Task & Purpose

‘We’re under attack by billionaires’: Fired federal workers speak out on terminations

“It’s scary,” said Hickman, who was fired last Tuesday. “I had a real moment — I was at CVS the other day and … it kind of came on me all at once that I might not have health insurance in a few weeks, and that really hits you. I think it underscores the fact that we’re just regular, middle-class people, just like the people we’re trying to serve.”

ABC News

Trump’s global funding freeze leaves anti-terror programs in limbo

U.S. officials say now-suspended programs across Africa were designed specifically to respond to national security threats and contain the spread of terrorism.

The Washington Post (Gift)

A Black transgender woman’s testimony helped ratify the 14th Amendment. Then conservatives began attacking her identity

Thompson’s testimony in 1866 came at a critical time, as the nation weighed whether to expand equal constitutional protections to newly freed Black Americans. But it also came at a great personal cost – a decade after her landmark testimony, Thompson was cruelly outed, arrested for cross-dressing and forced to work in an all-male chain gang.

Historians and advocates tell CNN they draw parallels between all that Thompson experienced as a Black trans woman and today’s anti-transgender political climate after President Donald Trump signed numerous executive orders targeting trans American minors’ right to access medical treatment and participate in school sports teams aligned with their gender identities.

CNN

Republican senator who voted for RFK Jr balks at Louisiana anti-vaccine move

Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.

Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department. Cassidy had also previously voted to advance Trump’s nomination of Kennedy as national health secretary from the committee level to the full Senate.

The Guardian

Outside Stonewall, Trans People Won’t Be Erased

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and their allies gathered outside the Stonewall Inn on Friday to manifest physically what the Trump administration has sought to erase in government records: that transgender and queer people have demonstrated, protested, and occasionally fought in the streets throughout American history for their civil and human rights. 

Huffpost

Concern rising as pope misses Sunday Angelus and remains in hospital

Vatican sources said the 88-year-old had spent a restful second night at the city’s Gemelli hospital after being admitted on Friday afternoon. He had watched the television news on Saturday evening, the reports said.

But the La Repubblica newspaper noted that this was only the second time in almost 12 years that he had failed to recite the Angelus. In July 2021, when in the same hospital, he had done so from a hospital balcony, it said.

dpa International

Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts

A Turkish opposition party delegation arrived in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region Sunday against the backdrop of peace efforts between Ankara and a banned Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey.

AP News

Isolated Indigenous man makes brief contact with outside world, then returns to tribe in the Amazon rainforest

Locals believe the man was asking for fire. Smartphone video of the encounter showed one resident trying unsuccessfully to show the man how to use a lighter.

CNN

Millions worldwide protest Argentinian president’s hateful anti-LGBTQ+ speech

Marches across Argentina and around the world brought millions to the streets earlier this month to protest Arginitian President Javier Milei’s anti-LGBTQ+ speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

LGBTQ Nation

Protests escalate in Germany’s Munich after car-ramming attack

Opposing protests took place in the southern German city of Munich on Sunday following a deadly car-ramming attack that killed two people and rekindled a debate on deportations just days before a nationwide election.

On Thursday, a 24-year-old Afghan national drove a car into a trade union demonstration in Munich, injuring at least 39 people, some seriously. A 37-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter died on Saturday as a result of their injuries.

dpa International

Zelenskyy says US support is ‘critical’ for Ukraine’ survival, calls Putin ‘scared’ of Trump

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believes his country has a “low chance” of surviving its bloody war with Russia without continued American support.

“I think it’s very important, critical,” Zelenskyy told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday. “I don’t want to think that we will not be strategic partners. I don’t want to think about it because it will make a pressure on morality of Ukrainians”

USA Today

A major Canadian flag maker’s sales have doubled from a year ago as tensions mount with U.S. — ‘The more Trump talks, the more flags we sell’

The blustery winter months are usually the slowest of the year for Flags Unlimited, which claims to be Canada’s largest flag producer. In the past six weeks, however, sales are double what they were a year ago.

The boost in demand for the maple leaf-stamped, red-and-white flag is a result of a surge in Canadian patriotism, according to Flags Unlimited co-owner Matt Skipp, fueled by tensions with the U.S., which have been stoked by President Donald Trump. 

Fortune

Zelenskyy says Russia will ‘wage war on Nato’ if US support for Ukraine wanes

“It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I do not know when he prepares it,” Zelenskyy said. “But it will happen. And at that moment, knowing that he did not succeed in occupying us, we do not know where he will go.”

The Guardian