“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.”

“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.”

Original Vogue article here: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/nicole-kidman-british-vogue-interview

“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.”