Listen Up Girl — Saturday, July 25, 2026
A federal program for LGBTQ+ veterans dismantled by email. A member of Congress hauling poster boards of drag queens into a hearing room. An arrest in West Virginia that should make every "protect the children" politician in the country sit down. And a story from 1890s Manhattan that reframes all of it.
🎖️ The VA quietly erases its LGBTQ+ veteran care network
For ten years, the Department of Veterans Affairs ran the LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator Program — designated staff in every region helping LGBTQ+ veterans find competent care. On Wednesday, July 22, an internal email told coordinators the letters were coming out of their titles, national communications and procedures were discontinued, and the internal resource site was going away. Staff were told to save anything they wanted to keep. In June, leadership had assured coordinators nothing was changing. One provider called it moral injury on top of moral injury. Another called it a cruel erasure. Other population-specific VA programs remain untouched.
🖼️ Nancy Mace brings drag queens to Congress on a poster board
The outgoing South Carolina congresswoman spent Wednesday grilling the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History over a display in the Entertainment Nation section featuring RuPaul and two Drag Race queens — complete with printed poster boards in the hearing room. She accused the museum of sexualizing children and of representing "queer pedophiles." The director stayed composed and noted not a single visitor had complained. Kandy Muse responded with two words: "Can I sue?" Joey Jay said she's already talking to a lawyer.
⚖️ A "protect the children" lawmaker arrested for allegedly preying on a child
David Elliott Pritt, 36, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, assistant majority leader, and a school teacher, was arrested Wednesday on a federal charge of enticement of a minor. He has not entered a plea and is presumed innocent. The arrest happened in a state whose legislature has spent years passing bills about bathrooms, sports, and school policy — all of it wrapped in the language of protecting young girls.
🇺🇦 Pig heads at a salon door in Kyiv
At 6:17 AM on Tuesday, July 21 — the day of Kyiv's Equality March — someone left severed pig heads and entrails at the entrance of GX Bar, a beauty salon in Kyiv, and poured blood across the doorstep. The salon says it caps a month of coordinated attacks: threats, property damage, leaked home addresses, threats against staff families. Forty locations across twelve countries, and this is the cost of standing up for human values.
When the administration gutted USAID, tens of thousands of people lost their livelihoods overnight. New reporting shows some former aid workers — people who ran HIV prevention programs and clinics — have turned to sex work to survive. Not an unintended consequence. Just a consequence.
✅ And a win: the Ninth Circuit says no
An Oregon education specialist who displayed anti-transgender books in the office where he met one-on-one with middle schoolers — then kept doing it after being told to stop — lost his appeal this week. A three-judge panel upheld the lower court 2–1, leaning on a robust body of precedent: educators speak as government employees when they convey messages to students inside a school.
🕯️ The room above the brothel
In 1890s Manhattan, a group met in a rented room and called themselves the Cercle Hermaphroditos — the earliest known transgender advocacy group in this country. Not a social club. An advocacy group. They organized around an almost unthinkable idea: that they were not sick, not criminal, not alone, and had the right to defend themselves. More than 130 years later, we're watching a federal agency delete letters from job titles. Somebody's always got to go first.
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Hosted by Zach Randles-Friedman
4. SUGGESTED CHAPTERS
(Estimated placement — adjust to your final audio.)
00:00 — Today's headlines 00:30 — The VA deletes its LGBTQ+ veteran care network 03:45 — Nancy Mace brings drag queens to Congress on a poster board 07:15 — A "protect the children" lawmaker arrested 10:30 — Pig heads at a salon door in Kyiv 13:15 — "Sex work or starve": the USAID fallout 15:20 — A win: the Ninth Circuit upholds a firing 17:45 — The room above the brothel: Cercle Hermaphroditos, 1890s Manhattan 20:00 — Outro
Hosted by Zach Randles-Friedman
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