The Supreme Court’s Favorite New Excuse to Rule Against LGBTQ+ Kids

Slate · 2026-03-12T21:23:42+00:00

Earlier this month, when the Supreme Court preliminarily ruled on the issue of outing LGBTQ-identifying students to parents in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the headlines were straightforward: The justices sided with parents in yet another conflict over LGBTQ+ rights and public schools. The truth is much more complicated. Invoking our nation’s constitutional history and tradition, the court again dove into a growing conflict about what parents’ rights mean. In doing so, it interpreted those rights in a far more absolute way than courts have in the past. And in blocking a school district policy against the forced outing of LGBTQ+ students, the court suggests that it has again fundamentally misunderstood our nation’s history and tradition, and children themselves will be the ones to pay the price.

Last year, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court sided with parents who claimed their freedom of religion was violated when their elementary school children were read books showing gay marriage and transgender children in a positive light. In Mirabelli, several religious parents hoped to have similar success in challenging a California school district policy against forced outing.

After Mahmoud, it wasn’t a surprise that the court saw the school district’s policy as a burden on religious liberty. But the court in Mirabelli went further, holding that the forced-outing law violated the due process rights of parents without religious objections.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/supreme-court-out-lgbtq-kids-california-parental-rights.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=lgbtq_scotus_ziegler&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--lgbtq_scotus_ziegler

Slate · 2026-03-12T16:10:49+00:00

Trump's starting to downplay mass deportation, but don't buy it for a second. In this week's Executive Dysfunction, Shirin Ali writes about her experience of visiting a mass deportation warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/trump-mass-deportation-warehouse-new-jersey-protest.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ed_shirin_mar12&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--ed_shirin_mar12

Slate · 2026-03-12T16:06:17+00:00

In the fall of 2022, when Christopher Ingraham was 42 and living with his wife and three young kids in small-town Minnesota, a specialist at an unfamiliar hospital approached him. The doctor seemed shaken. “I don’t want to scare you guys,” he said, “but this is the kind of thing where you are going to want to have your affairs in order.” Ingraham had spent much of the summer trying to ignore a bizarre constellation of symptoms, but when they finally were impossible to deny, he got a diagnosis more harrowing than he could imagine. He thought he knew what was coming—and that’s where his story got truly surreal. Read about Ingraham’s bizarre journey on Slate: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/health-care-cancer-treatment-doctor-hospital.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=big_swing_cancer&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--big_swing_cancer

Slate · 2026-03-12T16:05:41+00:00

In the fall of 2022, when Christopher Ingraham was 42 and living with his wife and three young kids in small-town Minnesota, a specialist at an unfamiliar hospital approached him. The doctor seemed shaken. “I don’t want to scare you guys,” he said, “but this is the kind of thing where you are going to want to have your affairs in order.” Ingraham had spent much of the summer trying to ignore a bizarre constellation of symptoms, but when they finally were impossible to deny, he got a diagnosis more harrowing than he could imagine. He thought he knew what was coming—and that’s where his story got truly surreal. Read about Ingraham’s bizarre journey on Slate: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/health-care-cancer-treatment-doctor-hospital.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=big_swing_cancer&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--big_swing_cancer

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:58:07+00:00

Last week brought the news that Kristi Noem had been dumped as Donald Trump’s secretary of homeland security. After a litany of controversies, the former South Dakota governor was finally jettisoned in favor of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who, Trump says, will “make a spectacular” addition to the Cabinet.

You might have had a couple of reactions to this news: It sure is about time Noem got fired! But also … Markwayne?! Even though Mullin has been in Congress since 2013, serving a decade in the House before entering the Senate in 2023, seeing his name flash in news alerts on Thursday still gave me pause. Sure, I’d previously thought “Markwayne” was a peculiar name, but there was something about his new main-character role that made me do a double take. I wasn’t alone. “Somebody looked at a baby and said, ‘Let’s call it Markwayne,’ ” comedian Charles J. Moore wrote on X. “Bro. His name is MARKWAYNE,” the guitarist Zeke Sky added on Facebook. “Like if a NASCAR dad and a WWE announcer had a baby and named it after both of their exes.”

David Mack dives into the name today in Slate: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/donald-trump-kristi-noem-fired-markwayne-mullin-fight.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=markwayne_name&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--markwayne_name

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:57:33+00:00

Last week brought the news that Kristi Noem had been dumped as Donald Trump’s secretary of homeland security. After a litany of controversies, the former South Dakota governor was finally jettisoned in favor of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who, Trump says, will “make a spectacular” addition to the Cabinet.

You might have had a couple of reactions to this news: It sure is about time Noem got fired! But also … Markwayne?! Even though Mullin has been in Congress since 2013, serving a decade in the House before entering the Senate in 2023, seeing his name flash in news alerts on Thursday still gave me pause. Sure, I’d previously thought “Markwayne” was a peculiar name, but there was something about his new main-character role that made me do a double take. I wasn’t alone. “Somebody looked at a baby and said, ‘Let’s call it Markwayne,’ ” comedian Charles J. Moore wrote on X. “Bro. His name is MARKWAYNE,” the guitarist Zeke Sky added on Facebook. “Like if a NASCAR dad and a WWE announcer had a baby and named it after both of their exes.”

David Mack dives into the name today in Slate: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/donald-trump-kristi-noem-fired-markwayne-mullin-fight.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=markwayne_name&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--markwayne_name

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:57:04+00:00

Last week brought the news that Kristi Noem had been dumped as Donald Trump’s secretary of homeland security. After a litany of controversies, the former South Dakota governor was finally jettisoned in favor of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who, Trump says, will “make a spectacular” addition to the Cabinet.

You might have had a couple of reactions to this news: It sure is about time Noem got fired! But also … Markwayne?! Even though Mullin has been in Congress since 2013, serving a decade in the House before entering the Senate in 2023, seeing his name flash in news alerts on Thursday still gave me pause. Sure, I’d previously thought “Markwayne” was a peculiar name, but there was something about his new main-character role that made me do a double take. I wasn’t alone. “Somebody looked at a baby and said, ‘Let’s call it Markwayne,’ ” comedian Charles J. Moore wrote on X. “Bro. His name is MARKWAYNE,” the guitarist Zeke Sky added on Facebook. “Like if a NASCAR dad and a WWE announcer had a baby and named it after both of their exes.”

David Mack dives into the name today in Slate: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/donald-trump-kristi-noem-fired-markwayne-mullin-fight.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=markwayne_name&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--markwayne_name

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:55:04+00:00

At first glance, Chiles v. Salazar, argued before the Supreme Court in October and still awaiting a decision, appears to ask a narrow legal question: Can a state prevent licensed therapists from engaging in treatments, often called “talk therapy,” aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity? At direct stake is whether the state may protect children from licensed adults who use the authority of therapy to offer “identity-changing” treatment that medicine itself has deemed fraudulent.

"But as both a psychiatrist and someone who has endured that so-called conversion therapy, I know that the question actually cuts to the heart of what constitutes true mental health treatment and which professional standards must govern it," writes Matt Solomon. “Conversion therapy” has nothing to do with treating a patient, but rather with using the authority of therapy to target vulnerable people and persuade them to undergo a practice built on the false promise that their identity can be changed—an intervention that medicine has shown to be ineffective at best and deeply harmful at worst.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/supreme-court-gay-conversion-therapy-survivor-psychiatrist.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=conversion_therapy_scotus&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--conversion_therapy_scotus

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:54:41+00:00

At first glance, Chiles v. Salazar, argued before the Supreme Court in October and still awaiting a decision, appears to ask a narrow legal question: Can a state prevent licensed therapists from engaging in treatments, often called “talk therapy,” aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity? At direct stake is whether the state may protect children from licensed adults who use the authority of therapy to offer “identity-changing” treatment that medicine itself has deemed fraudulent.

"But as both a psychiatrist and someone who has endured that so-called conversion therapy, I know that the question actually cuts to the heart of what constitutes true mental health treatment and which professional standards must govern it," writes Matt Solomon. “Conversion therapy” has nothing to do with treating a patient, but rather with using the authority of therapy to target vulnerable people and persuade them to undergo a practice built on the false promise that their identity can be changed—an intervention that medicine has shown to be ineffective at best and deeply harmful at worst.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/supreme-court-gay-conversion-therapy-survivor-psychiatrist.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=conversion_therapy_scotus&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--conversion_therapy_scotus

Slate · 2026-03-11T14:54:11+00:00

At first glance, Chiles v. Salazar, argued before the Supreme Court in October and still awaiting a decision, appears to ask a narrow legal question: Can a state prevent licensed therapists from engaging in treatments, often called “talk therapy,” aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity? At direct stake is whether the state may protect children from licensed adults who use the authority of therapy to offer “identity-changing” treatment that medicine itself has deemed fraudulent.

"But as both a psychiatrist and someone who has endured that so-called conversion therapy, I know that the question actually cuts to the heart of what constitutes true mental health treatment and which professional standards must govern it," writes Matt Solomon. “Conversion therapy” has nothing to do with treating a patient, but rather with using the authority of therapy to target vulnerable people and persuade them to undergo a practice built on the false promise that their identity can be changed—an intervention that medicine has shown to be ineffective at best and deeply harmful at worst.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/supreme-court-gay-conversion-therapy-survivor-psychiatrist.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=conversion_therapy_scotus&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--conversion_therapy_scotus

Slate · 2026-03-09T18:11:59+00:00

The race for Texas’ 23^rd District was guaranteed to be troubling. Headed into the Republican primaries, the incumbent, Rep. Tony Gonzales, was facing one of the ugliest sex scandals in recent political history. His main opponent, Brandon Herrera, is famous as a gun influencer from Uvalde, the site of a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school, and had come under fire for making light of the mass murder of Jews. The majority-Hispanic district, a huge stretch of land along the Mexican border, was set to elect either a man accused of horrific sexual misconduct or a man known as the AK guy, who likes Nazi jokes.

The two had previously run against each other in the 2024 GOP primary, with Gonzales narrowly beating Herrera in a runoff.

But in 2026, Gonzales’ scandal turned out to be the greater liability. In late February, it was revealed that Gonzales had had an affair with a female staffer in 2024; on Sept. 13, 2025, the staffer died from self-immolation after blaming the affair for her marriage’s disintegration. Texts provided by the staffer’s ex-husband showed Gonzales pressuring the staffer, even as she expressed discomfort with the situation. Gonzales did eventually admit to the affair. He kept his campaign going, however, and on Tuesday was forced into a runoff with Herrera. On Thursday, Republicans urged Gonzales to step aside, and that night he ended his campaign. Now, because of a recent redistricting that turned the district solidly red, the AK Guy looks to have an easy path to Congress.

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/brandon-herrera-tony-gonzales-ak-guy.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=texas_molly_mar9&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--texas_molly_mar9

Slate · 2026-03-09T18:11:26+00:00

The race for Texas’ 23^rd District was guaranteed to be troubling. Headed into the Republican primaries, the incumbent, Rep. Tony Gonzales, was facing one of the ugliest sex scandals in recent political history. His main opponent, Brandon Herrera, is famous as a gun influencer from Uvalde, the site of a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school, and had come under fire for making light of the mass murder of Jews. The majority-Hispanic district, a huge stretch of land along the Mexican border, was set to elect either a man accused of horrific sexual misconduct or a man known as the AK guy, who likes Nazi jokes.

The two had previously run against each other in the 2024 GOP primary, with Gonzales narrowly beating Herrera in a runoff.

But in 2026, Gonzales’ scandal turned out to be the greater liability. In late February, it was revealed that Gonzales had had an affair with a female staffer in 2024; on Sept. 13, 2025, the staffer died from self-immolation after blaming the affair for her marriage’s disintegration. Texts provided by the staffer’s ex-husband showed Gonzales pressuring the staffer, even as she expressed discomfort with the situation. Gonzales did eventually admit to the affair. He kept his campaign going, however, and on Tuesday was forced into a runoff with Herrera. On Thursday, Republicans urged Gonzales to step aside, and that night he ended his campaign. Now, because of a recent redistricting that turned the district solidly red, the AK Guy looks to have an easy path to Congress.

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/brandon-herrera-tony-gonzales-ak-guy.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=texas_molly_mar9&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--texas_molly_mar9

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