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      Texas Sues for Access to Records of Women Seeking Out-of-State Abortions

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      The lawsuit takes aim at federal privacy rules, including one enacted this year that Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, called “a backdoor attempt at weakening Texas’ laws.”Texas has sued to block federal rules that prohibit investigators from viewing the medical records of women who travel out of state to seek abortions where the procedure is legal.The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Lubbock, targets medical privacy regulations that were issued in 2000, and takes aim at a rule issued in April that specifically bans disclosing medical records for criminal or civil investigations into “the mere act of seeking, obtaining, providing or facilitating reproductive health care.”Texas bans abortions in almost all circumstances. Women are not subject to criminal prosecution for obtaining abortions, but state law imposes penalties of as much as life in prison for those who aid in obtaining abortions.The lawsuit claims that the privacy rules ignore federal law that lets states view medical records “for law enforcement purposes.”In a statement on Wednesday, Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, called the April rule “a backdoor attempt at weakening Texas’ laws.” He added: “The Biden administration’s motive is clear: to subvert lawful state investigations on issues that the courts have said the states may investigate.”Officials with the federal Health and Human Services Department did not comment on the lawsuit, but told The Associated Press that the Biden administration “remains committed to protecting reproductive health privacy and ensuring that no woman’s medical records are used against her.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Cass Report: Biased or Balanced?

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      More from our inbox:Child Tax Credits Can Save Women’s LivesWake Up, RepublicansRicardo TomásTo the Editor:Re “The Strange Report Fueling the War on Trans Kids,” by Lydia Polgreen (column, Aug. 18):Thank you to Lydia Polgreen for this thoughtful, well-researched piece. She clearly identified the faulty and dangerous unspoken premise of the Cass report and much of the reporting on this topic: that being transgender is socially deviant and harmful, and we should do everything in our collective power to reserve gender-affirming care for those we deem virtuous enough to become “good” members of society.She also pointed out critics’ double standards. Our medical system routinely provides — without controversy — the same gender-affirming medications to cisgender children and adolescents that it provides to trans children and adolescents. The issue is clearly not “concern for children” but the deep-rooted transphobia that this “concern” masks.What if we didn’t think of being trans as being deviant or broken? What if we saw it for what it is: an identity as old as human existence that is as worthy of respect and celebration as any other, especially amid this climate of fear? What if we focused less on creating unnecessary barriers to care and more on protecting the right to self-determination and access to health care that respects each person’s unique needs?Libby Hartle-TyrrellBrooklynTo the Editor:Lydia Polgreen speculates on the legitimacy of the Cass report in what I see as an effort all too common among public figures: to burnish their liberal credentials at the expense of families like mine. They state that pediatric gender transition is too politicized, but blame only the Republicans. But I wish, I beg, that they talk to parents like me.Many of us are liberal, (formerly) Democratic professionals whose kids have been caught up in the left’s politicization of this issue. Our kids — who are smart, but struggle with mental health issues and anxiety — spent too much time online during Covid and self-diagnosed themselves as gender dysphoric. Meanwhile, activists have aggressively pushed an affirm-or-else, one-size-fits-all policy on educators, mental health providers and doctors.This confluence has created a dystopian nightmare for well-educated, thoughtful and compassionate parents who urge caution and question medicalization. People who we used to align with politically are telling our kids that we are transphobic and support their cutting us off. We grieve and watch in horror as our vulnerable kids permanently scar their bodies, reproductive organs and voices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s Transgender Daughter, Says He Was ‘Cruel’ and ‘Uncaring’

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      Vivian Jenna Wilson’s remarks, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, were a response to Mr. Musk’s comments about her transgender identity.Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said this week that her father had been “uncaring” and behaved in a “cruel” manner toward her as a child over her being queer and feminine.In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Thursday, Ms. Wilson, 20, called Mr. Musk “cold,” “very quick to anger” and “narcissistic.” She described him as an absent father who, according to NBC, would “harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school.”Ms. Wilson’s interview came in response to remarks Mr. Musk made earlier this week about her transgender identity.In an interview on Monday with the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson that was streamed live on X, Mr. Musk used Ms. Wilson’s birth name, which is known as deadnaming, and said that she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” Mr. Musk also said that he had been “tricked” into authorizing gender-affirming care for her. He later doubled down on his claims about Ms. Wilson on X, saying that she was “born gay and slightly autistic” but that she “was not a girl.”Ms. Wilson said that her father’s comments had “crossed a line,” and she countered that he “knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment” when she was 16, NBC reported.It said that Ms. Wilson said she thought that her father had been “under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged, which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions. I’m not just gonna let that slide.”Mr. Musk did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment on Friday afternoon.Ms. Wilson has largely stayed out of the public eye, NBC reported. The last time she garnered media attention was in 2022, when she filed a request to change her name “and, in the process, denounced her father,” it said.At the time, NBC reported, Ms. Wilson said in a court filing that she no longer lived with Mr. Musk, nor did she “wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”Ms. Wilson told NBC on Thursday that she had not spoken with her father in about four years “and that she refused to be defined by him.”“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult,” she said, according to NBC. “I am 20 years old. I am not a child. My life should be defined by my own choices.” More

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      New Hampshire Bans Gender-Transition Surgery for Minors

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      The move is in line with what other Republican-led states have done, but it is the first such ban in the Northeast.The NewsNew Hampshire will ban gender-transition surgeries for minors after Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill on Friday that bars health professionals from performing the procedures. The new law also threatens disciplinary action for doctors who refer minors to other providers for such services.The governor, a Republican, also signed a bill that bars transgender athletes from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, and another that lets parents choose to have their children opt out of any public school instruction in “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender expression.”Mr. Sununu vetoed a fourth bill that would have allowed businesses and public entities to separate bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams based on biological sex.BackgroundThe moves are in line with what other leaders in the Republican Party have done. About two dozen other states have passed laws that bar transgender minors from receiving gender-transition care.“This bill focuses on protecting the health and safety of New Hampshire’s children and has earned bipartisan support,” Mr. Sununu said in a statement about the measure banning gender-transition surgeries.Before Friday, Mr. Sununu had taken a relatively mixed stance on gender-identity issues and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.In 2018, he signed bills that banned discrimination based on gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations and prohibited therapies that sought to change the sexual orientation of minors.“We must ensure that New Hampshire is a place where every person, regardless of their background, has an equal and full opportunity to pursue their dreams and to make a better life for themselves and their families,” Mr. Sununu said at the time.At a State House hearing last year, Courtney Tanner, senior director of government relations for Dartmouth Health, testified against the measure banning surgeries, saying: “We don’t like to legislate medicine. These are complex subject matters that are really between a patient and a provider.”The measure signed into law was significantly pared down from its initial version, which included prohibitions on a wider range of medical treatments for transgender minors, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and top surgeries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Tennessee Law Banning Transition Care for Minors

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      The move comes as states around the country have pushed to curtail transgender rights.The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for transgender minors violates the Constitution.The move means the court will for the first time hear arguments on the issue of medical care for transgender youth.The Biden administration had asked the justices to take up the case, United States v. Skrmetti, arguing that the measure outlaws treatment for gender dysphoria in youths and “frames that prohibition in explicitly sex-based terms.”In the government’s petition to the court, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the law bans transgender medical care but that it “leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose.”Federal courts have splintered over laws aimed at blocking transition care, intensifying pressure on the Supreme Court to intervene. The justices have considered whether to take up the appeals at their private conference each week, but they had repeatedly postponed making a decision.The move comes as states around the country have pushed to curtail transgender rights. Conservative lawmakers have prioritized legislation in recent years that targets gender-transition care and at least 20 Republican-led states have enacted measures restricting access to such medical care for minors.It is also part of a broader effort at legislation aimed at regulating other parts of life, including laws about which bathrooms students and others can use and which sports teams they can play on.This spring, the justices temporarily allowed Idaho to enforce a state ban that limited medical treatment for transgender youth. The law, passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, makes it a felony for doctors to provide transgender medical care for minors, including hormone treatment.The decision in that case, which came to the justices as an emergency application, appeared to split largely along ideological lines, with the court’s liberals dissenting.Along with Idaho, the justices had been asked to weigh in on legislation in Kentucky and Tennessee.The Tennessee measure bans health care providers from offering transition care to minors, including puberty blockers and hormone treatments.The Kentucky law, known as S.B. 150, bans doctors from providing gender-transition surgery or administering puberty blockers or hormone therapy to people under 18.In June 2023, federal judges in both states, in separate rulings, temporarily blocked the laws days before key parts of the laws were set to go into effect.Shortly after, a divided panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the lower court decision, reinstating the bans. Plaintiffs in Kentucky and Tennessee appealed to the Supreme Court. More

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      Gabbi Tuft, First Openly Trans Former W.W.E. Star, Returns to Wrestling

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      Ms. Tuft, who retired from the W.W.E. more than a decade ago and came out as transgender in 2021, will return to the ring on Tuesday, she said on social media.Gabbi Tuft, a former World Wrestling Entertainment star and the first current or former member of the organization to come out as transgender, will return to the ring this month, she said on social media on Sunday.Ms. Tuft, who retired more than a decade ago, fought in the W.W.E. under the name Tyler Reks, a dreadlocked gladiator who weighed 250 pounds. She left the organization shortly after the birth of her child, and has since become an online personal fitness and nutrition coach and a TikTok personality with more than a million followers.On Sunday, Ms. Tuft announced that she would be performing for West Coast Pro Wrestling on Tuesday at the Irvine Improv, a venue in Irvine, Calif., which hosts professional wrestling events. The match, she said, would air at a later date on YouTube and other national TV stations.“Mother Arrives,” Ms. Tuft said on social media. “Everything that is unfolding is per the plan,” she added. “Stay faithful. There is more to the plan than what you see or what you think.” Her opponent was not announced.In an interview with The New York Times last year, Ms. Tuft, who came out publicly as transgender in 2021, said she first began dressing as a woman during the pandemic, but was initially in denial, believing it was similar to adopting a persona in the ring and justifying it as another “form of role play.”Months later, she came out to her wife. The following year, she posted a photograph of herself in front of a portrait of her old W.W.E. persona, Tyler Reks, to Instagram.“This is me. Unashamed, unabashedly me. This is the side of me that has hidden in the shadows, afraid and fearful of what the world would think; afraid of what my family, friends, and followers would say or do,” Ms. Tuft wrote in the accompanying caption. “I am no longer afraid and I am no longer fearful.”In Sunday’s social media posts announcing her return to wrestling, Ms. Tuft wrote, “Mother will guide her children to salvation.” More

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      The Culture Wars Came to a California Suburb. A Leader Has Been Ousted.

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      Voters recalled a Southern California school board president after his conservative majority approved policies on critical race theory and transgender issues.From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lynn Conway, Computing Pioneer and Transgender Advocate, Dies at 86

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      She made significant contributions at IBM, but she lost her job because of her conviction that she inhabited the wrong body. She later fought for transgender rights.Lynn Conway, a pioneering computer scientist who was fired by IBM in the 1960s after telling managers that she was transgender, despite her significant technological innovations — and who received a rare formal apology from the company 52 years later — died on June 9 in Jackson, Mich. She was 86.Her husband, Charles Rogers, said she died in a hospital from complications of two recent heart attacks.In 1968, after leaving IBM, Ms. Conway was among the earliest Americans to undergo gender reassignment surgery. But she kept it a secret, living in what she called “stealth” mode for 31 years out of fear of career reprisals and concern for her physical safety. She rebuilt her career from scratch, eventually landing at the fabled Xerox PARC laboratory, where she again made important contributions in her field. After she publicly disclosed her transition in 1999, she became a prominent transgender activist.IBM offered its apology to her in 2020, in a ceremony that 1,200 employees watched virtually.Ms. Conway was “probably our very first employee to come out,” Diane Gherson, then an IBM vice president, told the gathering. “And for that, we deeply regret what you went through — and know I speak for all of us.”Ms. Conway in 1983 beside her Xerox Alto, an early personal computer developed at the company’s PARC laboratory.Margaret Moulton/Palo Alto WeeklyMs. Conway’s innovations in her field were not always recognized, both because of her hidden past at IBM and because designing the guts of a computer is unsung work. But her contributions paved the way for personal computers and cellphones and bolstered national defense.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More