By Ann Rostow—
Ghosts in the Machines
From time to time, I encounter a weekly lesbian multiple choice quiz on Autostraddle. This time, the questions led to one’s selection as a swamp creature, and I was a Great Blue Heron. I feel as if I should go out of my way to take this quiz on a regular basis along with The New York Times news quiz and the “flashback” history quiz. But, then again, how many weekly crucibles must I confront? And to what end?
Out of curiosity, I changed one of my twelve answers. In response to the question of what food I would bring to the swamp, I removed my original selection of “tinned fish” and checked “hard boiled eggs” instead. This minor adjustment turned me into “The Swamp Lady,” an evil harridan covered with wet reeds. Say what? I went from being a lovely shore bird to a grotesque she-devil just because I picked eggs rather than sardines for my swamp snack? This development made me doubt the legitimacy of the entire Autostraddle quiz infrastructure. How exactly are these categorizations determined? (I am furrowing my brows and have a frowny face expression.)
Meanwhile, in an effort to avoid jumping cold into the still-mystifying efforts of the Department of Justice to track down the names and details of transgender teens looking for medical help, I was idly scrolling through random GLBT news and found this oddball: “BBC documentary to explore whether King James VI and I were gay.”
I’m no expert, but, perhaps just because of my advanced age, I do know that King James VI and James I are the same person. The headline writer, in turn, need not be a historian but should check the content of the story before providing a one-line summary. James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, was the king of Scotland for many years and eventually became the king of England after the death of Elizabeth I, who had no children. I think England and Scotland became one country at that point. (Yes!) So, to summarize, he was James VI in Scotland, and James I in England, and I guess possibly gay in both contexts.
I see here that, in addition to a marriage that produced seven kids, he had strong romantic attachments to various courtiers, including Esme Stewart, Robert Carr and George Villiers. His passions are confirmed by the sexy letters he wrote to his favorites. So, there you have it. The documentary, Queen James, was released this month in the U.K.
Cruel and Usual
I believe I told you last time around that I can’t nail down the full details of how the Justice Department is manipulating grand juries in Northern Texas to subpoena protected information about transgender patients at various East Coast hospitals. It’s damned complicated and the bottom line is that Trump and company will go to any lengths to make life harder for transgender Americans of any age, in any situation. There are a number of court deadlines and announcements expected shortly on the transgender health care front, so I will undoubtedly have an update next time we meet in these pages.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, June 7, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued another preliminary injunction against Trump and company, ruling that 14 transgender women inmates cannot be transferred to a men’s prison without violating their rights under the Eighth Amendment. Judge Lamberth had already issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration’s ugly efforts, but a 2–1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in April that each woman would have to be evaluated individually. Lamberth did so fairly promptly, shredding the Justice Department’s flimsy rationales like cheap tissue.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of transwomen in both state and federal prisons are housed with male populations. The women in this small subset were sent to women’s prisons for individual reasons; they had surgically transitioned, they may have suffered from assaults in the past, they may have taken hormones since very early ages. Whatever the causes, they would be particularly prone to psychological distress and physical threats were they to be reclassified and dumped in with the guys. Following the appellate court’s instructions, Judge Lamberth laid out some 20 pages explaining why each case deserved the injunction; those pages were redacted for privacy.
It is bad enough that the Trump administration has targeted transgender men, women, and kids for hostile and demeaning treatment. In terms of prisoners, he has also recently come up with new anti-trans policies including a “tapering off” or halt to hormone therapies, which almost all of these men and women have been relying on for years. Yet, here he goes even further by singling out a tiny fraction of the most vulnerable transwomen prisoners, and, instead of just frigging leaving them alone, sends his dogs at the DOJ on the attack. His capacity for bullying and cruelty is limitless, and so is that of his loyal minions.
New Hope for Transpeople in the Military
Moving right along, on June 1, a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld an injunction that blocks Trump’s Department of Defense from ousting transgender service members. The same majority did, however, restore the right to ban transgender applicants from trying to enlist. And, no, I did not study the legal rationale behind that distinction. Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die.
The decision came in Talbott v U.S., one of two lawsuits filed against the administration in early 2025. In March of last year, Judge Ana Reyes first ruled against Trump and Hegseth, but, in a blow to all of us, the D.C. Circuit struck down her injunction pending further review. That review is finally over and the case is thankfully revived. The plaintiffs in Talbott have also asked the court to give them class action status, allowing the eventual decision to apply to all transgender military personnel. A hearing on this motion is coming up later this month.
Meanwhile, there’s a parallel transgender military case continuing in Washington State, where Emily Shilling and her fellow plaintiffs argue that transgender bias is inherently outlawed under laws against sex discrimination. (The Talbott case is based on the idea that transgender Americans comprise a suspect class and cannot be subjected to discrimination without intensive court review.) After Judge Benjamin Settle issued a preliminary injunction against the government in Shilling v U.S., the Trump administration appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with Judge Settle and let the injunction stand.
Trump and company appealed again, and, that May, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned one-paragraph decision out of the nefarious shadow docket, putting a hold on the injunction and once again allowing Trump to oust transgender Americans bravely trying to serve their country. You may remember Pete Hegseth posting, “No more trans @DOD,” after that ruling. The case then went back to the Ninth Circuit to consider whether or not a permanent injunction should apply, and, at this point, we are waiting for the Ninth Circuit decision.
To be honest, I’m once again a little lost between the two cases, the back and forth between temporary and permanent injunctions, the nuanced distinctions in legal theories, and the frequent trips up and down the judicial ladder. After the recent ruling in Talbott, Hegseth posted, “See you at SCOTUS,” and I’m sure we will be hearing from them soon. I guess the silver lining behind the clouds of chaos here is the idea that transgender service may be tied up in the federal courts for another couple of years until Trump leaves and the litigation dies. That said, Hegseth has already kicked out many transgender soldiers and sailors, so the damage is underway.
Undetectable and Unbowed
Speaking of military service, I missed telling you the other day that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has agreed to rehear a case about HIV-positive military recruits “en banc,” meaning with all judges seated. The appellate court vacated a February ruling against the HIV-positive men by a three-judge panel (that I also managed to ignore in this column) and will start from scratch. In the interim, the court clarified that the three-judge panel’s permanent injunction would not be in effect during the litigation— excellent news indeed.
According to one of the lawyers for the HIV-positive recruits, the three-judge panel’s ruling was an “aberration,” and courts to date have recognized that “well-managed HIV” has no bearing on the ability to serve. Prior to Trump’s first administration, the Defense Department had various restrictions on HIV-positive military personnel, including a ban on serving overseas. In 2018, Trump tried to identify these active-duty soldiers and sailors and have them removed from the service, but lawsuits ensued. After a federal judge ruled in favor of the service members in 2022, the Biden administration declined to appeal.
“Individuals who have been identified as HIV-positive are asymptomatic, and who have clinically confirmed undetectable viral load will have no restrictions applied to their deployability or to their ability to commission while a Service member solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status,” wrote Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time. Two years later, in 2024, the same judge ruled that undetectable HIV-positive recruits could not be rejected because of their HIV status.
Flash forward to Trump Two, and, in late 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit put an injunctive hold on the aforementioned lower court ruling, allowing the government recruiting office once again to turn its back to HIV-positive men. (Over 95% of HIV-troops are male.) The February ruling was a permanent injunction—fortunately reversed as we mentioned—and the full Fourth Circuit will now weigh in.
Law and Disorder
Oh my, God, you guys! I feel as if I’m having a surreal dream of, let’s say, arriving in law school with no preparation and being obliged to answer questions rapid fire by a mean-looking professor in front of an auditorium full of snickering classmates. Maybe I’m wearing a clown suit.
I didn’t exactly plan on cruising through lawsuit after lawsuit and having to look up many details that each take ten minutes to resolve while dragging myself through all sorts of tangential pieces of information that made me question what I just spent an hour researching.
What’s with these temporary injunctions and permanent injunctions and why can’t these courts actually get to the merits of any of these cases? Since when is the High Court allowed to repeatedly stick their grimy little fingers into the pie before it comes out of the oven and force everyone to start a new recipe? Do you know how long it took me to figure out when and why the ban on recruiting HIV-positive military personnel was lifted, or not lifted, or whathaveyou? Somehow, the same judge who ruled on the status of serving members returned later to rule on recruits. Was that a separate case? Why can’t I find it?!
I feel like Rachel Maddow, and not in a good way. I love her, of course, but I lose patience with the mysterious trips down mystery lane into obscure historical characters who (we hope) will eventually have some relevance to today’s news.
“So, back in the early 1930s, there was a man named Lionel Winkerston … .” (Rachel smiles with a giddy look in her eye that indicates she’s really going to love telling us this story.) “And Lionel Winkerston lived in a little house in a little suburb of Chicago called Plainsville.” (Rachel leans forward. I go fix myself an elaborate cocktail that will take about 20 minutes to construct.) “Which is how we wound up with an independent Federal Reserve in the first place!” (Rachel leans back in her chair, satisfied.)
No, I wasn’t that bad. But I did find myself digging up old memos from Lloyd Austin, and, as one part of me was writing, another part of me was asking: “Why, Ann? How did you get here?”
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on June 11, 2026
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