22 h. ago Transgender people notch rare win in fight over Trump’s ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’

‘I think there are a lot of people who are rightfully relieved,’ Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of congress, tells The Independent

Politics

29 h. ago US supreme court to weigh transgender student sports bans in key rights case

Justices will hear Idaho and West Virginia appeals on laws barring trans girls from female public school teamsThe US supreme court announced on Thursday that it will consider a bid by West Virginia and Idaho to enforce their state laws banning transgender athletes from female sports teams at public sector schools.The decision means the court is prepared to take up another civil rights challenge to Republican-backed restrictions on transgender people. Continue reading...

Events

31 h. ago ‘Accelerated censorship’: advocates criticise US supreme court ruling on LGBTQ+ books

Opponents say the decision allowing parents to let their kids opt out of lessons featuring LGBTQ+ themes will hurt the US education systemKiernan, a 24-year-old transgender person from Colorado, feels drained from dealing with legislation that consistently limits the spaces and freedoms of people like him. Since he transitioned in 2016, it’s been the same – first bathroom bills, then censorship in the education system – routine attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that Kiernan feels have now just become part of living in the US.Now, in the wake of the Mahmoud v Taylor supreme court ruling, the stigmatization of these communities is likely to worsen. Continue reading...

Events

31 h. ago ‘Accelerated censorship’: advocates criticize US supreme court ruling on LGBTQ+ books

Opponents say the decision allowing parents to let their kids opt out of lessons featuring LGBTQ+ themes will hurt the US education systemKiernan, a 24-year-old transgender person from Colorado, feels drained from dealing with legislation that consistently limits the spaces and freedoms of people like him. Since he transitioned in 2016, it’s been the same – first bathroom bills, then censorship in the education system – routine attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that Kiernan feels have now just become part of living in the US.Now, in the wake of the Mahmoud v Taylor supreme court ruling, the stigmatization of these communities is likely to worsen. Continue reading...

Events

51 h. ago North Lanarkshire Council’s Driving Digital Locally Intergenerational Project wins Municipal Journal Achievement Awards honour

The project, which bridges digital divide by offering older residents personalised, one-on-one training sessions with young people, scooped Transforming Lives accolade.

Events

60 h. ago Cass review: how has report affected care for transgender young people?

Review led to profound changes, some of which made young people feel unsupported, yet new clinics are openingAt the heart of the controversy about how to meet the needs of young people questioning their gender has been the huge rise in referrals to the Tavistock – previously the only dedicated clinic in England and Wales treating children with gender dysphoria.The clinic was closed one month before the Cass review into youth gender identity services, commissioned by NHS England and led by the British paediatrician Hilary Cass, which found that children had been “let down” by the NHS amid a “toxic” public discourse. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago How Indigenous people find themselves on the frontline of the green transition

Renewable energy and critical minerals projects often want to mine on sacred lands but minority groups are fighting back through the courtsLocated in Wikieup, Arizona, at the meeting point of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, H’a’Kamwe’ has for centuries had sacred significance for the Hualapai tribe. They regard the hot spring, fed by water naturally stored underground in volcanic rocks, as a place for healing that symbolises their connection to the land.So when an Australian mining company announced plans to begin exploratory drilling for lithium at 100 locations on Hualapai land, including as close as just 700 metres from H’a’Kamwe’, they regarded it as a potential desecration. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Rise in legal action against renewables companies over minerals

Renewable energy and critical minerals projects often want to mine on sacred lands but minority groups are fighting back through the courtsLocated in Wikieup, Arizona, at the meeting point of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, H’a’Kamwe’ has for centuries had sacred significance for the Hualapai tribe. They regard the hot spring, fed by water naturally stored underground in volcanic rocks, as a place for healing that symbolises their connection to the land.So when an Australian mining company announced plans to begin exploratory drilling for lithium at 100 locations on Hualapai land, including as close as just 700 metres from H’a’Kamwe’, they regarded it as a potential desecration. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers review – finally, Netflix makes a great, serious documentary

Twenty years on, this heart-racing four-part series reconstructs the terror attacks and the vast investigation that followed, without losing sight of the survivors. The detail about the bathtub is astonishingNetflix is not always known for its restraint in the documentary genre, but with its outstanding recent film Grenfell: Uncovered, and now Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers, it appears to be finding a new maturity and seriousness in the field. There have been plenty of recent documentaries on the subject of the attacks and the sprawling investigation that followed – no surprise, given that it is the 20th anniversary this week – but there is still real depth to be found here.Over four parts, this thorough series unravels the initial attacks on the London transport system, which killed 52 people and injured more than 700, then follows that febrile month into the failed bombings of 21 July, and then the police shooting of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes, a day later. Th...

Events

4 d. ago No state is safe: Trans people are planning to move overseas rather than live in Trump’s America

Conservatives’ increasingly frenzied attacks on trans rights have made many people feel the USA is no longer safe for them — and the Court’s ruling in US v Skrmetti is just the latest ‘domino’, Io Dodds reports

Politics

4 d. ago Supreme Court throws out appellate rulings in favor of transgender people in 4 states

The Supreme Court has thrown out appellate rulings in favor of transgender people in four states following the justices’ recent decision upholding a Tennessee ban on certain medical treatment for transgender youths

Events

4 d. ago Denmark’s army extends compulsory enlistment to women for the first time

‘In the situation the world is in now, it’s needed. I think it’s only fair and right that women participate equally with men’

Politics

5 d. ago ‘No one is coming to save us’: Trans people are planning to move overseas rather than live in Trump’s America

Conservatives’ increasingly frenzied attacks on trans rights have made many people feel the USA is no longer safe for them — and the Court’s ruling in US v Skrmetti is just the latest ‘domino’, Io Dodds reports

Politics

5 d. ago How do we resist and rise? We have to believe the impossible is possible | V (Formerly Eve Ensler)

Every action matters now. Every effort small or large counts. And moving, movement is the essential key to dispelling despairIn this authoritarian and suffocating climate where being an American feels like a curse, where just breathing here feels like complicity with genocide, psychotic imperialism, misogyny and endless racism, it is hard to move, let alone imagine what one can do to transform this horror to good.Every day people are kidnapped by masked men in unmarked cars, taken to hidden sites and left in deplorable conditions; starving people in Gaza are slaughtered as they clamor for a bag of flour; public officials and leaders humiliated and murdered; the T erased from LGBT; brain-dead women forced to give birth; the glib language of hate and cruelty and easy thoughtless threats of world war, assassination, and dehumanization circling like invisible poison. What feels most perilous is the steady evaporation of the boundaries of what seemed impossible only a few weeks ago. Mora...

Politics

6 d. ago Tens of thousands defy Hungary’s ban on Pride in protest against Orbán

Crackdown on Pride is part of effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly-contested election next yearTens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”.Jubilant crowds packed into the city’s streets on Saturday, waving Pride flags and signs that mocked the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as their peaceful procession inched forward at a snail’s pace. Continue reading...

Events

8 d. ago How we're killing our microbiome and kimchi alone won't save it – video

Our human microbiome is in decline, which is likely to be contributing to the sharp rise in non-communicable diseases, health conditions that cannot be directly transmitted between people, such as cardiovascular disease and cancers. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Dr James Kinross, colorectal surgeon and author of the book Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome, about why the human microbiome is in decline, how modern life is impacting it and what we can do to look after itJames Kinross also appeared recently on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, you can listen here:Your microbiome questions answered: part oneYour microbiome questions answered: part two Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Boy George takes ‘muggle’ swipe at JK Rowling live on air after row

Boy George called JK Rowling a “muggle” following their social media row over transgender people.

Society

9 d. ago 'Trans people are being attacked'' says activists as they unite for mass lobbying day in Westminster

More than 1,400 people signed up for the event, believed to be the largest LGBT+ mass lobby since the fight against Section 28 in the late 1980s

Events

9 d. ago 'Trans people are being attacked' say activists as they unite for mass lobbying day in Westminster

More than 1,400 people signed up for the event, believed to be the largest LGBT+ mass lobby since the fight against Section 28 in the late 1980s

Events

9 d. ago 'Trans people are being attacked'' says activists as they unite for a mass lobbying day in Westminster

More than 1,400 people signed up for the event, believed to be the largest LGBT+ mass lobby since the fight against Section 28 in the late 1980s

Events