How CA is defending transgender youth in new Trump period

In 2022 California declared itself a refuge for transgender well being care after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a regulation guaranteeing gender-affirming care for California minors and people residing outdoors the state.

Now greater than a month into his second time period, President Donald Trump is testing California’s sanctuary standing — and a few younger transgender Californians say they’re residing in concern, writes CalMatters’ Jocelyn Wiener and Kristen Hwang.

Since returning to the White Home, Trump has issued government orders to acknowledge solely two organic sexes; threaten funding for faculties that help transgender college students; prohibit transgender women and girls from collaborating in ladies’s sports activities; and ban gender-affirming care for folks underneath 19, describing it as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”

The orders have had an instantaneous impact in California: Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles quickly stopped transgender well being companies for anybody underneath 19. (Although the hospital reversed course after the California Division of Justice despatched a warning letter.) Stanford College additionally plans to ban transgender athletes from competing in ladies’s sports activitiesin compliance with the federal administration.

LGBTQ advocates say the federal authorities’s anti-trans insurance policies are resulting in some normalization of prejudice towards transgender folks. In addition they say there have been dramatic will increase in melancholy, self-harm and suicidal ideas amongst transgender youth.

On the day after the Nov. 5 election, The Trevor Venture, a nonprofit devoted to LGBTQ suicide prevention, logged an almost 700% enhance in contacts to its psychological well being disaster hotline.

Daniella, a 20-year-old transgender school pupil within the San Diego space mentioned a person not too long ago burst into her classroom and verbally harassed college students and the professor over their determination to listing their gender pronouns. The person was not enrolled within the class, Daniella mentioned.

• Daniellawho requested to be recognized solely by her first identify: “It was literally terrifying. This is the new normal. That is what this society is coming to because that is what people see from leadership.”

Learn extra right here.

For the previous 9 months, native governments throughout California have been cracking down on public tenting after a U.S. Supreme Court docket ruling final June granted cities extra authority to clear homeless encampments.

However one case — involving the town of Vallejo, an unhoused resident and a profitable (albeit probably non permanent) federal injunction — has authorized consultants and attorneys representing homeless plaintiffs paying shut consideration.

As CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall explains, for practically two years Evelyn Alfred has been residing in a makeshift shelter subsequent to a residential Vallejo neighborhood. In October, the town knowledgeable 64-year-old Alfred that it supposed to take away her camp. However Vallejo, based on court docket paperwork, doesn’t present shelter or transitional housing.

So Alfred sued, together with her attorneys arguing that she’d be endangered if she have been compelled to go away her camp. In addition they claimed Vallejo violated the People with Disabilities Act by failing to accommodate Alfred’s disabilities when it tried clearing her camp.

Regardless of disagreeing with the ADA argument, a U.S. District Decide in the end sided with Alfred. And because the case proceeds, both by trial or settlement, Alfred can stay the place she is.

Learn extra right here.

In response to the January L.A. County wildfires, many state lawmakers sought to chop bureaucratic pink tape and pace up reconstruction. Now, a brand new legislative report underscores the necessity to make authorities opinions of assorted housing, environmental and infrastructure initiatives extra environment friendly, writes CalMatters’ Ben Christopher.

Led by Assemblymember Buffy Wicksan Oakland Democrat, the Meeting’s choose committee on allowing reform launched its last fact-finding report inspecting why it takes California so lengthy to construct condo buildings, wind farms, public transit and different initiatives. The offender? Allowing processes which can be “time consuming, opaque, confusing, and favor process over outcomes,” mentioned the report.

Although it doesn’t supply exact suggestions, the report presents perception in regards to the potential alternatives for change that payments from this present session would deal with, similar to permitting third-party consultants to approve challenge plans.

• Wicksto CalMatters: “Right now, there are too many opportunities in the process to put a wrench in the gears. There will be a cost for us Democrats on the ballot in the future if we don’t fix that problem.”

Learn extra right here.

After directing state staff again to the workplace at the least two days per week final yr, Gov. Newsom issued an government order Monday requiring a minimal of 4 in-person days. Discover out when this coverage is anticipated to start out and what number of staff this may have an effect on from CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff.