A Florida teenager has documented how it feels to be young and transgender for a film set to debut at a festival as transgender people around the world celebrate visibility and lawmakers across the country look to restrict their rights and care.
Carys Mullins, 19, who is gender non-conforming and uses she and they pronouns, said their experience inspired conversations with community members for a documentary, “You’re Loved.” The film directed and produced by Mullins is set to premiere Friday at the Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival on International Transgender Day of Visibility.
“That’s a big part of what the festival is,” Mullins said. “A big part of the Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival is: Look at us.”
“You’re Loved” debuts at a time where access to gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary young people is under assault across the United States. Florida, Missouri and Texas have regulations banning puberty-blocking hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for minors. At least 11 other states ban gender-affirming care for minors by law: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota and West Virginia.
Federal judges have blocked enforcement of laws in Alabama and Arkansas, and nearly two dozen states are considering bills this year to restrict or ban care.
When describing how it feels to be a gender-nonconforming person in their home state, Mullins draws many comparisons.
“It feels like you’re under a microscope.”
“It feels like we’re all in a circus.”
“It almost feels like you’re a guinea pig of sorts for people who have no idea what it’s like to be trans, to be nonbinary, to be gender-nonconforming. They don’t see us as people.”
Mullins interwove perspectives from three young transgender people in Florida, Texas and Illinois, along with mental health providers, advocates and allies. They sent participants a set list of questions, depending on their role in the documentary, and edited together their recorded answers.
Topher Malone, a Black transgender high school student in Round Rock, Texas, said participating in the documentary gave her space to be herself.
“I could share my story,” Malone said. “And, you know, those opportunities don’t come often, especially for Black trans youth.”
Malone spoke at a Texas House committee hearing on Monday about a measure seeking to restrict care. The hearing started around 8 a.m. Malone said she wasn’t able to speak until after 11 p.m.
“I’m a youth. I go to public school. I’m supposed to be supported by my government,” Malone said, “And so, that not being true is just so difficult.”
The bills have a measurable impact on the well-being of transgender youth. Half of transgender adults ages 18 through 34 say they have had suicidal thoughts in the past year, and about a quarter said that they have engaged in self-harm, they had an eating disorder and they misused alcohol or drugs, according to a Washington Post-KFF poll of transgender adults in the U.S.
The poll shows nearly 8 in 10 transgender adults overall say living as a gender that is different from the gender they were assigned at birth has made their lives more satisfying.
But the poll also shows transgender adults say they are satisfied with their lives at a lower rate than the U.S. adult population as a whole.
Transgender adults are especially likely to report feeling anxious, depressed or lonely in the past year. About two-thirds say they have faced discrimination because of their gender identity or expression. And 78% say that growing up, they experienced serious mental health problems such as depression or anxiety.
“The landscape right now is urgent,” said Jonah DeChants, senior research scientist at The Trevor Project.
However, while the numbers are grim, DeChants does not want them to be the sole focus in conversations about transgender youth. He said polls and surveys have also shown that access to adult role models and communities that affirm their identity can play a significant role in lowering suicide risk.
“For me especially as a scientist and a former youth worker, it’s really exciting to see data that firmly shows that being an ally to young people matters,” DeChants said.
Florida-based psychologist Dani Rosenkrantz, who also participated in the documentary, sees herself as part of this larger support system for the young transgender and nonbinary people she works with. Despite the challenges she faces operating as an LGBTQ+ therapist in Florida, Rosenkrantz wants to give space for her clients to not only process their grief, but also to find joy in their identities.
“Our life isn’t just these awful, sad, real statistics that are really important to know about and resist, but it’s also these beautiful, thriving people.” Rosenkrantz said.
Mullins hopes their documentary resonates with transgender people and with the community at large. They see the message of love as universal.
“At the end of the day, if you take away these labels and these identities, the whole point of this film is you are loved and you are seen, no matter what experiences you go through,” Mullins said.
In Texas, Malone finds her joy in many places: at underground ballroom events, in online communities, and even Monday after the hearing. Malone said there was a rally as they were leaving the state Capitol after midnight, with people shouting, laughing, and dancing.
“There was a sense of community,” Malone said. “There was a sense of trans joy in that moment.”
Total Doses Distributed = 973,224,305. Total Doses Administered = 674,024,493. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,965,210. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,368,815.
For every American killed by gunfire, an estimated two or more more survive, often with terrible injuries — a fact that public health experts say is crucial to understanding the full impact of guns on society.
A new government study highlights just how violent the recent past has been in America by showing a surge in people wounded by gunshots during the pandemic, when the number of people fatally shooting each other – and themselves — also increased.
During the first two years of the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of people injured by gunfire rose 40%, compared with 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study published Thursday. In 2022, gun injuries tapered off, but were still 20% higher than before the pandemic.
Gun injuries rose similarly for men and women over the past three years, while the largest proportional increase occurred among children younger than 15, a subset that remains a small fraction of the overall problem.
Experts say the CDC gun injury study, which uses data from hospital emergency departments, helps provide a more comprehensive picture of gun violence in America than simply measuring homicides and suicides.
“Hospitals are a great place to keep the pulse on who is being shot, and when and where,” said Catherine Barber, a senior injury researcher at Harvard University’s school of public health.
The CDC study results came from more than 2,200 U.S. hospital emergency departments, which represent the bulk of the nation’s ERs, said Thomas Simon, one of the authors of the new study.
The study suggests that the number of gunshot-related ER visits at hospitals in the study rose from around 50,000 in 2019 to more than 72,000 in 2020. Because more than a quarter of U.S. hospital emergency departments were not involved in the study, the actual number is likely significantly higher.
Experts believe a variety of factors contributed to the pandemic surge in gun violence, including a rise in guns purchased, more time spent inside homes where guns are present and mental health struggles stemming from social isolation and economic hardships.
The CDC study shows a rise in gun injuries around mid-March 2020, after a pandemic emergency was declared and lockdowns and other measures were put into place. A sharper jump occurred a couple of months later, in the second half of May, when protests and civil unrest followed the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
While the CDC study did not differentiate between injuries caused by assaults or accidents, other research has shown that about 3 out of 4 gunshot wounds are intentional.
The CDC says more than 45,000 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. in 2020, and more than 47,000 in 2021.
The country’s gun violence problem was thrust into the national conversation again this week after a shooter killed 3 children and 3 adults at a Christian school in Tennessee; nobody who was shot survived. The shooter was killed by police.
“We are in a week when people are paying attention to this issue again, sadly, after a mass shooting in Nashville” said Nina Vinik, executive director of Project Unloaded, an advocacy group focused on the impact of gun violence on children. “Hopefully this paper will add new data to that conversation.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
President Joe Biden won’t veto a Republican-led measure to end the national COVID emergency, despite having expressed strong objections against it earlier this year, ensuring the bill is on an easy path to becoming law.
It marks the second time in the new Congress that the Biden administration has signaled opposition to a Republican measure, rallying most Democrats in Congress to vote against it, only to soften its stance and let the legislation eventually become law.
Just weeks ago, Biden stunned many fellow Democrats when he declined to veto a Republican-led bill to upend a new criminal code for the District of Columbia he and others in the president’s party opposed, allowing the GOP’s tough-on-crime push into the local government to become law.
Republicans celebrated the turn of events Wednesday as a sign of their newfound influence in divided Washington, while Democrats quietly complained that the Biden administration had shifted its views.
But the White House stood firm, and the Senate gave final approval, 68-23, sending the bill to Biden’s desk.
A White House official said that when the House Republicans were first preparing to vote on the bill at the start of the year, it would have lifted the national emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic in February.
But now, it’s much closer to the White House’s own plan to wind down COVID national emergency status on May 11.
The president still strongly opposes the legislation, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the situation. But if this bill comes to Biden’s desk, he will sign it, the official said.
Ahead of voting, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., one of the bill’s main sponsors, said he hoped “that the rumors are true — that the president will finally sign this legislation.”
The legislation is a simple one-line measure saying that national emergency declared on March 13, 2020, “is hereby terminated.”
It comes from one of the more conservative Republicans in the House, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, and draws on Republican-led opposition to mask mandates, lockdowns and others precautions that were put in place to stem the spread of the virus during the pandemic. It was among the early bills the new House GOP put forward at the start of the year.
At the time, the administration warned the proposal would cause chaos. More than 197 Democrats in the House voted against it.
“An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system — for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,” the administration said in a formal statement of administrative policy.
In the days leading up to the House vote, the Biden administration announced its own plan to wind down emergency status on May 11, three years after the virus outbreak.
The administration’s announcement meant the federal coronavirus response would be treated more as an endemic threat to public health that could be managed through agencies’ normal authorities, rather than pandemic status.
Just a few weeks ago Biden signed another Republican-led bill into law that would nullify the District of Columbia’s revamp of its criminal code. The administration had previously said it opposed that bill.
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee voted to overturn a police reform package passed by the D.C. Council.
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked Thursday by a federal appeals court.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.
The ruling from the full appeals court, 16 full-time judges at the time the case was argued, reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel that had upheld the vaccination requirement. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated to the court by then-President Donald Trump, wrote the opinion for a 10-member majority.
The ruling maintains the status quo for federal employee vaccines. It upholds a preliminary injunction blocking the mandate issued by a federal judge in January 2022. At that point, the administration said nearly 98% of covered employees had been vaccinated.
And, Oldham noted, with the preliminary injunction arguments done, the case will return to that court for further arguments, when “both sides will have to grapple with the White House’s announcement that the COVID emergency will finally end on May 11, 2023.”
Opponents of the policy said it was an encroachment on federal workers’ lives that neither the Constitution nor federal statutes authorize.
Biden issued an executive order in September 2021 requiring vaccinations for all executive branch agency employees, with exceptions for medical and religious reasons. The requirement kicked in the following November. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by Trump, issued a nationwide injunction against the requirement the following January.
But a different panel, after hearing arguments, upheld Biden’s position. Judges Carl Stewart and James Dennis, both nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton, were in the majority. Judge Rhesa Barksdale, nominated by President George H.W. Bush, dissented, saying the relief the challengers sought does not fall under the Civil Service Reform Act cited by the administration.
The broader court majority agreed, saying federal law does not preclude court jurisdiction over cases involving “private, irreversible medical decisions made in consultation with private medical professionals outside the federal workplace.”
A majority of the full court voted to vacate that ruling and reconsider the case. The 16 active judges heard the case on Sept. 13, joined by Barksdale, who is now a senior judge with lighter duties than the full-time members of the court.
Judge Stephen Higginson, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, wrote the main dissenting opinion. “For the wrong reasons, our court correctly concludes that we do have jurisdiction,” Higginson wrote. “But contrary to a dozen federal courts — and having left a government motion to stay the district court’s injunction pending for more than a year — our court still refuses to say why the President does not have the power to regulate workplace safety for his employees.”
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The date of President Joe Biden’s executive order has been corrected to September 2021, not last September.
Total Doses Distributed = 971,469,075. Total Doses Administered = 673,465,377. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,835,963. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,283,056.
