Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan told Texas Monthly that Republicans’ focus on anti-transgender ads is failing to move voters in the state’s Senate race. Phelan cited $100 million and $125 million in ad spending with no shift in a month, after Republicans spent $215 million on anti-trans ads in the 2024 cycle. He warned the party could be in serious trouble in November as Texas becomes a battleground state.
Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan told Texas Monthly that Republicans’ focus on anti-transgender ads is “just not resonating” in the state’s Senate race, citing $100 million to $125 million in spending that “hasn’t moved the needle.” Phelan, who led the 2023 impeachment of Senate candidate Ken Paxton, warned the party could face trouble in November. Republicans spent $215 million on anti-trans ads in the 2024 cycle, and Elon Musk’s America PAC has carried the strategy into this year’s midterms.
Transgender Kansans with IDs that no longer match their gender are planning to vote in the midterms, and three of the four trans women interviewed by The 19th voted in the primaries without issue. The state's SB 244 invalidated thousands of drivers' licenses based on gender identity, but the Kansas secretary of state's office said gender discrepancies cannot be a basis for denying the right to vote.
Alabama Democrats defended transgender candidates Allison "Ally" Montgomery and Terri Osborne after state Republican Party chair Scott Stadthagen called them "two men who have mental disorders" at a speech to the Eastern Shore Republican Women. Osborne, running for House District 96, and Montgomery, challenging Rep. Phillip Rigsby in House District 25, said Republicans focus on gender because they have failed at governing. Alabama Democratic Party LGBTQ+ caucus chair Richard White Jr. urged the party to fully support both candidates.
Pro-trans rights protesters lay down on the red carpet at a Thursday gala performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London's West End, shouting "Boycott J.K. Rowling!" At least three wore shirts reading "Rowling Money Kills," and one read a statement via bullhorn. The protest follows the BBC's announcement of a two-part documentary on Rowling's fame and controversies.
Grand Prairie Independent School District in Texas cancelled South Grand Prairie High School's production of Little Shop of Horrors after senior Ana Mota was cast as Seymour, citing Texas Senate Bill 12, which took effect on 1 September 2025 and restricts school instruction and activities related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
RuPaul's Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard said Big Brother housemate Philip "The Queen of Scotty Road" Regan should "get in the bin" over his remark about people who "identify as a fridge" during a conversation about trans people. Speaking on Big Brother: The Group Chat with hosts GK Barry and Kate Lawler, Beard said he had "gone right off" Philip and criticised anyone "pulling up the ladder behind them." Big Brother continues Sunday to Thursday at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX.
Updated NHS England guidelines bar trans patients and staff from using wards, bathrooms and changing rooms that match their gender identity, requiring facilities to be used on the basis of biological sex. The guidance, published 18 months after the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling on the Equality Act 2010, says trans people should be accommodated in line with their sex registered at birth or offered single rooms, with decisions made case by case and clinical need sometimes overriding.
Former Texas House speaker Dade Phelan told Texas Monthly that Republicans’ continued transgender ads are “just not resonating” with the 8 to 10% of swing voters who will decide elections. His comments follow Politico speaking on 14 October to five senior Republican lawmakers who agreed the party was likely to lose control of the US House of Representatives. Phelan remains a Texas House member but is not seeking re-election.
Transgender actress and dancer Ana Lupez died aged 82 in Mendoza, Argentina, on 14 October from heart cancer, LGBTQ Nation reports. Born in Guaymallén in 1944, she left home at 14, performed in circuses and cabarets in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, and later headlined at Barcelona de Noche in Spain, where she underwent gender-affirming surgery in 1986. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Miss Transformarte event in 2019.
Trans rights protesters rushed the red carpet ahead of a gala performance of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child at London's Palace Theatre on Thursday, with one wearing a T-shirt reading "Rowling money kills." The masked protesters lay down on the red carpet during arrivals before security quickly removed them, as celebrities including Vanessa Feltz, Richard Arnold, Anne Hegerty and Angellica Bell arrived. The gala marked a newly reworked one-part version of the West End show, which premiered in 2016.
Marsha's, a queer women's sports bar in Philadelphia, announced in an Instagram post that it will close this weekend after roughly a year in operation, saying it still believes the city needs more women, queer and BIPOC-owned businesses.
Trans rights protesters disrupted the red carpet at a Thursday gala performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London's West End, shouting "Boycott J.K. Rowling!" and wearing shirts reading "Rowling Money Kills." The protest follows J.K. Rowling's creation of the J.K. Rowling Women's Fund in 2025 and her reported $88,000 donation to For Women Scotland. The BBC also announced a two-part documentary on Rowling's career and controversies.
Out's 2026 Out100 In Memoriam entry remembers Juniper Blessing, a 19-year-old transgender University of Washington student studying atmospheric and climate science who was killed in the laundry room of her off-campus housing complex. Footage of her singing Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" went viral only after her death, drawing an outpouring of love; her loved ones described her as "the most amazing human being we have ever known" and as "pure love."
Two propositions on Colorado's November 3 ballot could restrict transgender students' school sports participation and ban surgeries for people under 18 that alter biological sex characteristics in response to gender identity, CBS News reports.
Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico defended his 2021 "God is nonbinary" comment at a CNN and Jubilee town hall Wednesday, saying he was being provocative but that the late Charlie Kirk and Pope Benedict made the same theological point. He also backed a national ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors under 18 while opposing Texas's broader ban.
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia took but did not pass the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine University Law School in 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported. Zacharia told The New York Times she was advised to call herself a lawyer but not an attorney, and senior administration officials confirmed the failed exam to NBC News. The White House told the Journal she was not hired to work on legal matters.
The Transgender Education Network, a Texas group advocating for trans and LGBTQ+ communities, said this week that someone impersonated it in a text message campaign linking to its online materials, including resources on navigating anti-LGBTQ+ school policies.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to answer 10 written questions from attorneys challenging Trump's transgender military ban, warning that evasive answers could lead to a deposition. Reyes questioned Justice Department arguments that Hegseth's public statements, including an anti-trans slur she recounted from a Quantico gathering of senior military leaders, are irrelevant to whether the policy was driven by anti-trans animus.
Rachel Talalay's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, the only Nightmare on Elm Street film directed by a woman, doubles down on the franchise's themes of parental abuse and neglect. The film opens in a Springwood with no children left, following the last teen, John Doe, and Dr. Maggie Burroughs back to the town. Its "troubled youth" — Spencer, Carlos and Tracy — are shaped by their parents' abuse, not their own choices.