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“The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles no longer accepts a form allowing transgender Ohioans to change the gender listed on their driver's license or state ID.

“A BMV spokesperson said the agency will change gender markers only with an updated birth certificate or passport. Officials determined the previous document, known as Form 2369, does not comply with an updated state law declaring that Ohio recognizes two sexes.

“Lawmakers inserted that language into the state budget signed by Gov. Mike DeWine last year.

“The advocacy group Equality Ohio criticized the BMV, arguing it made the change without public notice or a transition period. A spokesperson declined to say when the policy took effect.”

“Transgender Ohioans can change the gender marker on their birth certificates in at least eight counties, according to Equality Ohio. The group said legal name changes at the BMV aren't affected by the new policy.”

“One of the earliest documented examples of LGBTQ+ resistance against police happened on a hot summer night 60 years ago this month. It started not with the throwing of a brick, as it did in New York City’s 1969 Stonewall riots, but with the throwing of a coffee cup inside Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco.

“When police attempted to raid Compton’s – a hub for the drag performers, trans people and sex workers in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood – hundreds of people in the community fought back. A drag queen threw a coffee mug at a police officer; others threw dishes and chairs outside. It was the culmination of years of police harassment, arrests and violence against the community and the beginning of the city’s trans movement.”

“[I]nside the building, now known as 111 Taylor Street, the space that held Compton’s is occupied by one of the world’s biggest for-profit prison companies and ICE’s biggest contractor, Geo Group.”

“Opened decades ago, Geo Group’s 240-bed halfway house has been under investigation by city officials since last July, when a man was found dead near 111 Taylor after being held there.

“Local organizers Compton’s x Coalition – like their predecessors – treat current civil rights fights as interconnected, from ICE violence to the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights. And they are working to push out Geo Group not only through protest, but by petitioning the city to declare the interior of 111 Taylor a historic landmark.”

“The city and Police Chief Mark Talbot are named in a pair of related lawsuits over the hiring of a transgender police recruit.

“The lawsuits, totaling $20 million and filed last week and Monday in Circuit Court, were brought by a current officer on suspension and another officer who was fired earlier this year.”

“Officer Meghan Grabow’s lawsuit alleges she was in a women’s locker room in 2024, when a department recruit she describes as a ‘biological male self-identified as a woman’ entered that locker room.”

“Both lawsuits say subordinate officers were not informed that a transgender woman who presented as a man would be using the female lockers.”

“Grabow is suing Talbot and the city for $15 million, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress and denial of her right to exercise her religion. She said she doesn’t believe in transgender ideology as part of her Catholic faith.”

“According to the lawsuits, Grabow is currently on indefinite suspension without pay, Powers was fired earlier this year, and the recruit is no longer with Norfolk Police.”

“Texas Tech is using A.I. to ferret out books and other materials that touch on topics like sexual orientation and gender identity. Professors describe the effort as a dystopian academic nightmare, in which ideologues are wielding technology to sideline subject-matter experts.”

“The strictest prohibition at Texas Tech is on classes in the core curriculum, which are a menu of lower-level courses that students must select from in order to graduate. Mr. Creighton has banned any course in the core that includes material related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Sonja Stojanovic, a French studies professor, worried about her core course, called Holocaust in Literature. Because it mentions that gay and bisexual men were also targets of the Nazis, university leadership suggested that the course become an upper-level course.

“‘Now the Holocaust becomes an elective,’ she said.”

Some professors are self-censoring to avoid running afoul of the new guidance.

“[C]reative-writing professor Lucy] Schiller. . .said the new directives restrict teaching about ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ but do not define those terms. ‘They’re making us do the work of reading between the very obvious lines,’ she said, ‘and overcomplying out of fear that we might be reported or separated from our work or disciplined.’

“Jacob Bell, a Medieval historian, said he worried about how to discuss Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake for, among other reasons, cross-dressing. Mr. Creighton’s memo about gender exempts biographical details of historically significant figures. Still, any references must be ‘purely incidental,’ according to the April memo.

“Dr. Bell removed two weeks of study about Viking men and women. He said Viking mythological poems often featured gender-changing gods like Loki and Odin, material he no longer felt comfortable teaching.

“When asked about Dr. Bell’s case, Mr. Creighton suggested that professors not make pre-emptive decisions and rather submit materials to the university system for review.

“Dr. Bell went a different route. He believes that future Texas Tech students will be ‘unprepared to deal with normal people in the world that they’re going to interact with.’ He recently accepted a new job, at a public university on the East Coast.”

“Ms. Schiller did not make the changes. Rather, she left the university and started at Grinnell College this month.
‘I loved my job here until this year,’ she said.”

“United Nations (UN) experts warned on Monday that the UK’s revisions to the Equality Act 2010 risk discriminating against and excluding transgender people.

“The UN human rights experts warned that the updated Code of Practice essentially advises service providers that ‘a women’s service must either exclude transgender women or admit men’ and vice versa. The experts cautioned that this ‘effectively presents exclusion as a means of’ legal compliance, and may lead to institutionalized discrimination.”

“In February 2026, UN experts released a joint statement arguing that the draft Code of Practice was incompatible with international human rights, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

“On August 5, 2026, the Good Law Project announced its support for a legal challenge against the Code of Practice, on the grounds that it will have a discriminatory and exclusionary impact on transgender people. The Good Law Project argued that the Code of Practice appears to ‘ignore’ the UK High Court decision allowing services to provide transgender women with inclusive facilities.”

“A new report from Glisten and The Trevor Project finds that 56 percent of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive students surveyed attended schools with at least one discriminatory policy. Nearly one-third had recently missed school because they feared for their safety.

“The report draws from two national surveys involving 5,673 students. In The Trevor Project’s sample, 41 percent said they were prohibited from using a bathroom aligned with their gender, 38 percent faced locker room restrictions, and 33 percent could not participate on the appropriate sports team. More than a quarter were prevented from using their chosen name or pronouns.

“Sixty-one percent reported a negative experience at school, most commonly anti-LGBTQ+ verbal harassment. Nine percent said mistreatment became so severe that they left their school.”

“‘Schools continue to be hostile sites for LGBTQ+students, and in particular for trans, gender expansive, and BIPOC students,’ Glisten researchers Yu-Chi Wang and Shweta Moorthy said. By conducting focus groups, they said, researchers sought the ‘context and emotion’ behind the statistics.”

“A Douglas County judge on Monday granted a Lawrence transgender woman the temporary restoration of her driver’s license after the State of Kansas invalidated it earlier this year under an anti-trans law known as SB 244.

“The woman, Jamie Miller, when the case is fully heard later this year, is likely to prevail on her claim that her due process rights were violated, Judge James McCabria wrote in his order granting the injunction.

“‘No other remedy will suffice,’ he said, besides restoring her right to drive with a license that identifies her as a woman.”

“Among other hardships, she could not sign any document listing her sex or gender as ‘ male’ without committing fraud, the suit says. Additionally, she cannot legally drive without a valid license, impacting her ability to do basic tasks like going grocery shopping.”

“SB 244, which took effect in February, has multiple components that target transgender Kansans, including a provision that invalidates driver’s licenses and birth certificates of people who have changed their gender markers.

“There’s also a ‘bathroom bill’ component of SB 244, which requires public buildings to designate ‘multiple-occupancy private spaces’ as for either male or female users, based on the person’s sex as assigned at birth, and creates financial penalties for noncompliance.”

“At the CIA, they’d started an office pool on when I’d be fired.

“President Trump would be sworn in for his second term at noon; the smart money had me gone by 12:15. But the smart money hadn’t counted on Trump’s first pick to run intelligence for the National Security Council being shredded by an online mob on suspicion of disloyalty. There wasn’t yet anyone in place to fire me.

“After taking the oath, Trump spoke at the Capitol. ‘As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.’

“‘Did he … ?’ an NSA colleague asked. She glanced at me and looked away.

“‘Yeah,’ I muttered. The good news: I was one of those two genders. The bad news: The administration would have views as to which one.

“I gripped my badge. I could take it off, leave the White House complex, walk out the north gate, and never look back. I imagined the story they would tell: See? Even she knew she didn’t belong.

“I didn’t move. I’d wanted this badge since I was a kid. I’d chosen to be here.

“‘I know you all heard what the president said,’ I told my team after Trump’s speech. ‘There’s a rumor of an executive order on bathrooms. If anyone asks, I’m using the coffee shops across the street.’

“My whole team spoke up: Julia, we’ve got your back.
‘Me being trans is not a secret,’ I reminded them. ‘Promise me: Nobody covers for me.’

“Back in my office, I closed the door. I cried quickly, efficiently, no sound—­the way you do when the walls have ears, and everyone thinks you’re fearless.

“Joe Biden’s political appointees had left the week before, and I was now the senior intelligence official in the White House.”

“The Makabayan bloc [progressive party-list groups in the House of Representatives] is seeking a congressional inquiry into the reported attacks on transgenders, including at least one homicide, as it aims to institute measures that would penalize these hate crimes.

“Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago,, Kabataan Rep. Renee Co and Act Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio filed House Resolution No. 1369 last week calling on the House committee on women and gender equality to conduct a probe in aid of legislation into the ‘alarming’ cases of transgender deaths.”

“The groups cited at least four cases in the last three months alone, which they said reflects a crisis of hatred and impunity.”

“‘This pattern of violence constitutes a severe violation of the right to life and security of persons and underscores the urgent need for legislative action to address hate crimes, strengthen protective mechanisms and dismantle systemic discrimination that fuels such violence,’ they stressed.

“The Society of Trans Women of the Philippines supported the House resolution as it pointed out the urgency of investigating the killings of transgenders.”

"’Every time you wake up, it feels like — what's going to happen next?’ says the mother who asked NPR to identify her by her initials, A.W. ‘What else are they going to take away from us and our kids, to keep them thriving?’”

“The population affected by the rule the administration finalized on Tuesday is quite small. Health research organization KFF estimates there are 130,000 transgender people under age 18 who live in states where gender-affirming care is still available — many states have banned the care after a flurry of state laws in the last few years.

“A.W.'s family is in that small group. After her husband's company went out of business, they lost their health benefits, and are now enrolled in Medicaid. They also rely on food assistance, and A.W. says those cuts have been hard on them too.

“A longtime Republican herself, A.W. says she never would have believed her family would need this help. ‘But we do need it,’she says. ‘We need it really badly right now because my husband is still unemployed.’

“She says she knew the rule restricting access to transgender care through Medicaid was coming, since it was proposed in December. Still, when it was published, she felt panicked. ‘The initial just — what are we going to do?’”

“Youth enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP could still receive care if the states they live in decide to backfill the money the federal government will be withholding. Exactly how states will respond is unclear, says Lindsey Dawson, director of LGBTQ Health Policy at the nonpartisan health research organization KFF.”

“Days after the rule was published, the Trump administration released a report called ‘Wolves in White Coats,’ which features the stories of young people who have de-transitioned, meaning they once identified as transgender but don't anymore. The report accuses doctors and hospitals of being driven by greed and of using fraudulent billing practices.

“None of the named authors and contributors to the report are government employees, and many have ties to anti-trans advocacy work. CMS did not answer NPR's questions about the role HHS played in developing the report.”

"’I think we have to see the administration actions operating on two levels,’ says Dawson. ‘One is formal policymaking like we see with the Medicaid final rule, and the other is this whole suite of actions — the language being used and the social media posts — to stoke fear in the [health care] provider community.’”

“President Donald Trump’s goal of ending gender-affirming care is not improper and cannot be the basis for quashing a subpoena issued by the Justice Department against a provider of medical treatment for transgender youth, a divided federal appeals court ruled Friday.”

“On Feb. 25, Siobhan Kirchstein received an official letter from the Kansas Division of Vehicles instructing her to surrender her driver’s license. She was one of hundreds of Kansans who received such letters when Senate Bill 244, a hastily passed piece of legislation, invalidated driver’s licenses on which the gender marker did not match the holder’s sex as assigned at birth.”

“Kirchstein, who is 41, had transitioned in 2023. She had changed her legal name and her gender marker in the Social Security system, on her passport card and on her Kansas driver’s license.”

“Some of the words or expressions in this article may at first blush seem hyperbolic. One of them is ‘fascism.’ That’s how Kirschstein characterized the process when we met in Lawrence, Kan., in July: ‘It was soft fascism.’ It was.

“Fascism usually begins with redefining the nation by excluding certain groups, which are branded threats to national health and unity. The Trump administration has fixated on two groups most of all — immigrants and trans people — in just this way, smearing us (I am a member of both groups) as predatory, sick, at once subhuman and terrifyingly powerful.”

“Matthew Neumann, the executive director (and until recently the sole employee) of the L.G.B.T.Q. Foundation of Kansas, told me that his organization had heard from one trans man who was fired for leaving the state building where he worked to use the bathroom in another building.

“Another trans man, who switched to using the women’s bathroom pre-emptively, explains the law to anyone he encounters there, lest that person be startled by his presence. Imagine having to come out to strangers this way every time you have to pee.”

“Fascism works not only by the passage of arbitrary, dehumanizing laws but also by the arbitrary, dehumanizing enforcement of the laws.

“Only about 1,700 people have received the Letter; this is certainly only a small fraction of Kansans who have changed their gender marker. Several people who have not yet received it — including Abi Boatman, the legislator — told me that they regularly checked the state website to see if their old license still came up as valid. If so, is it safe to drive with it? The license is still illegal under the law. [Amanda] Mogoi, who runs the clinic in Wichita, told me that some of her trans patients have received the Letter three times while most haven’t received it once; some who tried to update their driver’s licenses without the Letter weren’t able to.”

“In the 1930s, a German Jewish jurist named Ernst Fraenkel developed a model he called the dual state. It is a state in which some people are subjected to increasingly restrictive laws that are applied arbitrarily while others continue to live in a regular, rules-based society. Fraenkel referred to the former as the prerogative state — a state whose defining characteristic is the authorities’ exercise of their prerogatives — and the latter the normative state. Fraenkel’s theory has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the United States during Trump’s second term, probably because it helps many Americans square their understanding of a rising autocracy with their subjective experience of daily life continuing as before.”

“In October 2025, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto issued a presidential decree outlining the country’s national defense policy and the nonmilitary threats his administration identified as important to the nation’s security. Listed in the latter category, alongside terrorism, radicalism, and drug addiction, was ‘the promotion of LGBTQ+ culture,’ as reported in the Jakarta Post.

“While the decree drew concern from civil society organizations in Indonesia, particularly pro-democracy and queer rights groups, it initially received limited attention outside Indonesia. Last month, however, a wave of hate crimes targeted transgender women across the country, highlighting Prabowo’s decree and what activists have described as the worsening conditions for LGBTQ+ people in Indonesia.

“Several transphobic incidents took place during July 14-16 of this year, all of which involved mobs attacking trans women specifically.”

“While Indonesia lacks explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ laws, several legal frameworks still indirectly discriminate against queer people, and stigma remains prevalent, largely as a result of conservative Muslim forces in the country.”

“‘Starting in 2016, we saw a moral panic around queer people created by the government, sparked by proposed bills to criminalize LGBTQ+ behaviour, and key political leaders openly classifying queer identities as a form of mental illness,’ [Febi Ramadhan, a lecturer and researcher in social anthropology at Universitas Indonesia] said. According to Febi, the transphobic attacks witnessed last month are just the latest such hate crimes to target the community, which have become more frequent over the past decade.

“For Febi, periods of economic turmoil are key drivers of homophobia and transphobia in Indonesia, with queer people being demonized to divert attention from other issues the government doesn’t want to address or take responsibility for. In this case, the legacy of the nationwide 2025 protests, which saw large-scale public unrest as a result of the stagnating economy and sinking currency, is undoubtedly at play.”

“‘During the 2016 moral panic, attacks came primarily from religious authorities and political leaders, but today those attacks are perpetrated by random individuals, which makes it hard for us to know who we are up against,’ [Cornelius Prabhaswara, a public policy student and human rights activist with online advocacy group Social Justice Indonesia] said.”

“Vice President JD Vance is taking on two administration priorities in one go: cracking down on health care fraud and restricting transgender care.

“Vance sent the Justice Department a report issued Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services accusing hospitals of incorrectly billing insurers for transgender health care procedures — such as prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to minors — in order to make a profit.”

“The report, ‘Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of ‘Gender Medicine,’’ comes two days after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cut off Medicaid funding to hospitals that offer gender-affirming care for minors.

“It was also released alongside a short documentary produced by HHS featuring testimonials from young people who said they regretted the gender-affirming care they received — an effort to bolster the Trump administration’s argument that certain adults are preying on children who don’t yet know enough to offer their full consent for certain treatments.”

“The new report … argues hospitals and health systems use upcoding to inflate bills linked to gender-affirming care [and] get insurance coverage for gender-affirming care procedures, which aren’t always covered by commercial insurance.”

“CMS tried in a proposed rule released in December to kick hospitals and health systems that performed gender-affirming care procedures on minors out of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, but a federal court blocked the move.”

“Lilly Wachowski has a script for a passion project ready to go — but she’s not seeing any interest from Hollywood.

“The filmmaker, who wrote and directed the Matrix trilogy alongside her sister Lana, said that the American film industry doesn’t want to back her latest project, a screenplay titled The Hunted that she wrote with her partner.”

“Wachowski said that folks in the film industry haven’t outright rejected the movie, but they haven’t been itching to invest in it, either. ‘When I show this script around town, and I say, ‘Hey, I wrote this really cool thing with my partner,’ you know, people like it,’ she explained. ‘But they really don’t want to make it because it’s wall-to-wall a trans cast. And so I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.’”

“The Hunted comes as part of a new chapter in Wachowski’s career as one of the leaders of the Anarchists United Foundation, an artists-owned nonprofit organization that she helped found to produce “smart genre movies” with budgets under $10 million, according to the org’s website. Wachowski leads Anarchists United with her manager Lawrence Mattis and Mattis’ former assistant Sarah Marie Flores.”

“The WNBA on Wednesday criticized those trying to create a narrative about transgender women playing in the league.

“‘There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others,’ a league spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement, hours after an anti-hate task force met virtually and discussed a variety of topics, including social media vitriol and transgender athletes.

“The league’s collective bargaining agreement states that ‘only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA,’ but it does not include any more specific language about gender identity or sex assigned at birth. Last Friday, two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft, saying they identify as women.

“The draft isn’t until next April.

“There has never been a transgender woman — a person assigned male at birth who transitions to align with their gender identity — on a WNBA roster. There have been players in the league who were assigned female at birth and later came out as transgender or nonbinary.”

“Santa Fe Opera is giving the first American performances of an opera about a transgender artist, with a transgender singer in the title role.”

“This year’s new offering, following an acclaimed 2023 introduction in Switzerland, is Lili Elbe, by American composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman.

“Picker and Stollman conceived their opera’s title role for baritone Lucia Lucas, who collaborated in developing the work and displayed a fine voice in the Aug. 5 performance. Start to finish, she exquisitely delineated Lili's evolution.

“Vocally, apart from Drew Comer’s underpowered Christian X, the opera was well served throughout. Even characters of more passing significance were well cast: Lindsay Martin as Anna Larssen Bjørner and Orpheus, Audrey Welsh as Eurydice and Young Woman, Evan Lazdowski as Art Critic, Lauryn Davis as Danish Countess, and Alexis Seminario as the surgery Matron.”

“Picker’s score was best when suggesting populist 1920s styles, as if imagined by Bernstein with added dissonance. But too much of the orchestral writing consisted of seemingly random diddles and pulsings and sonic smears, with too many gratuitous brass jabs that challenged singers to be heard; some thinning of instrumentation would help.The dissonance piled on at dramatically charged moments, but the orchestra didn’t always connect with the action or emotions at hand.”

“The Healey administration said it will assume the full cost of hormone therapy and counseling for transgender children and teenagers covered by two public insurance programs if a federal rule out Tuesday takes effect on Oct. 13, 2026, as proposed.”

“‘The Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to ensuring all Massachusetts residents have access to the life-saving gender-affirming health care they need and deserve,’ the spokesperson said in a statement. ‘We will work with our health care partners across the state so that they can continue to offer this critically important care in the face of federal assaults.’”

“The change would affect Massachusetts residents aged 18 and younger who are insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP. Both programs cover children in low to moderate income families, as well as some children who are disabled. The federal government typically pays 50% of the cost of care for children on Medicaid and 65% for those enrolled in CHIP.”

“A spokesperson for MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, said it spent $3.6 million on this care for members 18 and younger in 2024, the most recent year with complete data. Most of that — more than $2.6 million — was for hormone therapy, the estrogen or testosterone patients take to transition.

“The Healey administration has not said if this total includes the cost of puberty blockers — which delay the onset of puberty for some trans kids — or whether the administration will cover these drugs going forward. One commonly used method, an implant that can last a year or two, costs in the range of $50,000 for the device and procedure.”

“For over two years, a 16-year-old transgender girl says she was bullied, excluded and discriminated against by her teammates and coaches at the Capital Crew youth rowing program housed at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center.

“The alleged discrimination — which she says included segregating her from the rest of the team, allowing false rumors to spread, excluding her from opportunities she was qualified for, misgendering her and perpetuating a culture of hostility against her — eventually led to her quitting the team. She suffered enormous mental health consequences, she said, including self-harm and suicidal ideation.

“Now, through her mother, she has filed a lawsuit against her coaches, the Capital Crew youth rowing program and the Sacramento State Aquatic Center over sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and aiding and abetting of the bullying she faced from her teammates. In the complaint filed in the Sacramento County Superior Court under a pseudonym, she also names Sacramento State, its student government Associated Students, Inc., and the California State University trustees.

“The Capital Crew competitive youth rowing program is separate from Sacramento State’s intercollegiate athletics program. But it is a program under the Sacramento State Aquatic Center. The center is run by the university’s auxiliary organizations Associated Students and The University Union along with the California Division of Boating and Waterways and the California Department of Parks and Recreation.”

“‘The reason why this case is important, because at issue in this complaint, is the treatment of a child,’ said Susie Cirilli, who is representing the child and her mother. ‘For over a year, this child was left unprotected while the people in charge — when not actively engaging in the hostility themselves — condoned the unlawful harassment that was being committed by the other girls on the rowing team.’”

“‘It is important to understand that the rhetoric that is out there in the zeitgeist right now, the words and phrases and statements and news stories that are swirling around right now, people need to understand that it has direct effects on children,’ she said.”

“A transgender woman from the US who sought asylum in the Netherlands has returned home after her application bid failed and she suffered serious intimidation at the Ter Apel refugee centre.

“Jane-Michelle Arc, from California, was one of approximately 76 Americans that sought asylum in the Netherlands last year. She flew to Schiphol airport and was instructed by customs officers to report to the immigration service IND at Ter Apel, which houses roughly 2,000 asylum seekers.”

“‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done’, Arc told the Guardian. ‘The situation I have in the US as a trans person, not good, right?. But here, I will be hurt or killed,’ she separately told outlet Powned last month.

“She said it was too dangerous to even walk to the supermarket, and spoke of the rising violence around the centre that has occurred this summer amid an overflow of refugees who were sleeping outside the facility gates in the heat.

“After numerous fights, including two stabbings, aid organisations temporarily stopped working there for their own safety.”

“Arc estimated there are roughly 35-50 other trans people at the centre, housed in a special block away from other residents. It is unclear how many are seeking asylum on the grounds of gender discrimination, but Dutch group LGBT Asylum Support said in mid-2025 it was assisting around 20 US trans individuals with pending asylum claims.

“‘The IND generally states that discrimination by authorities and fellow citizens can be considered an act of persecution if it is so severe that victims can no longer function socially and societally,’ the group said in a statement reported by Reuters.

“‘But the IND maintains that there are no grounds for exceptional treatment of transgender and queer refugees from the US.’

“Another US asylum seeker, Lisa Gayle Carter-Stewart, who fled Montana with her 14-year old transgender daughter said their application was automatically rejected because America is considered a safe country, according to the Guardian.”