Free Republic

Mack Allen, 18, attends a rally for LGBTQ+ youth at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan., on Jan. 31. A Kansas law enacted last year ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender identities and now other states are considering such laws. (John Hanna / Associated Press) TOPEKA, Kan. — Mack Allen, an 18-year-old high school senior from Kansas, braces for sideways glances, questioning looks and snide comments whenever he has to hand over his driver’s license, which still identifies him as female. They’ve come from a police officer responding to a car accident. They’ve come from an urgent care employee...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — From targeting Chinese-owned farmland to banning gender-neutral terms like “pregnant people” from state documents, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has rolled out announcements in recent weeks in quick succession, cheered on by her Republican base. Washington — has also fielded questions from behind a lectern at the state Capitol. But it’s the lectern she’s not using — a $19,000 purchase that’s led to an audit and claims her office illegally altered public records — that remains a problem for the first-term governor. That lectern hasn’t been seen at Sanders’ public events, and the governor’s office...

Anti-transgender rhetoric and disinformation in the days following the shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people have heightened the fears of a community already on edge amid a historic push for more restrictions on trans people’s rights this year. Authorities haven’t shared any evidence linking Audrey Hale’s gender identity to the motive for the attack, which killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School last week. Yet right-wing commentators, politicians and other figures have cited the shooting as they’ve shared false claims of a rise in transgender mass shooters and suggested that the fight for...