Recent bills across the country foreshadow a tough year for LGBTQ youth

Jaden Amos | Paste BN

Today we're leading the newsletter with a column about LGBTQ youth and recent bills being introduced across the country. The CEO of The Trevor Project penned a piece on how these bills and the rhetoric surrounding them hurt the mental health of LGBTQ youth.

Recent bills across the country foreshadow a tough year for LGBTQ youth

By Amit Paley

Last week, the governor of South Dakota signed the first anti-transgender bill of 2022 into law, banning trans women and girls from playing on school sports teams that match their gender identity. While it was expected, the news is nonetheless heartbreaking, as it foreshadows an incredibly tough year ahead for LGBTQ youth.

We’re less than six weeks into 2022 and already tracking more than 150 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced across the country. Most of these bills specifically target transgender and nonbinary youth’s ability to play sports, receive gender-affirming medical care, and use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Some legislation, like the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” being heard in Florida, would go as far as banning any discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, and require teachers to out students to their parents if they disclose to someone at school that they identify as LGBTQ.

Today's Editorial Cartoon

Trump should answer these questions for Jan. 6 committee

By Michael Medved

With limited time to complete an essential public service, the congressional committee probing the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan.6, 2021, should avoid distractions and focus on the one witness who remains truly indispensable: the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Both historical patterns and recent polling strongly suggest that Republicans could win a decisive margin in the House of Representatives with the midterm voting this November. Shortly thereafter, the empowered GOP could disband the House select committee, despite united Democratic opposition – just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats commissioned it in the first place with only two Republicans willing to participate.

Before that partisan switch stops or redirects the congressional inquiry, the nation deserves a serious effort to confront Trump, personally, over his role in summoning the “Stop the Steal’ protesters to Washington, dispatching them up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, and then reacting to their depredations after they had begun battling police and ransacking the building.

Your private smartphone conversations are not private

By Erika Guevara-Rosas

Monday, Israel's security minister announced that it was setting up a national inquiry after a newspaper reported the use of spyware, Pegasus, against those close to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other public figures.

After a year that brought a landslide of evidence of the grave threat that surveillance technology poses to human rights worldwide, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center began 2022 by issuing a stark warning to the general public. Spyware presents a grave security threat in what is a widely unregulated, and underground, global spyware market.

There are multiple ways that spyware can be used to access people’s devices, even if a person takes all known digital security precautions. Hackers can record audio (including phone calls), track a phone’s location and access text messages, files, chats, contacts and browsing history

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This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos.

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