Video of the beating of an Alpine High School student in Alpine, Texas – Photo: CBS7/KOSA.
A video from a cell phone that has been making the rounds on social media shows a transgender student at Alpine High School being attacked by a fellow classmate.
In the video, the classmate, who appears to be wearing a sports jersey of some kind, is seen wrestling the student to the ground and repeatedly punching him.
The victim, who spoke with the Odessa, Texas-based CBS affiliate KOSA, says the attack was unprovoked, and began after the attacker cussed at him, and then began shoving and punching him in the face while two of the attacker’s friends laughed.
“[H]e said it’s because he didn’t like me and he didn’t like who I was, that I just pissed him off,” the victim, whose name is being kept confidential for his own safety, said.
Even though the video has been viewed thousands of times, there are no consequences for the aggressor because the attack occurred off school property on a weekend.
Alpine Independent School District Superintendent Becky McCutchen says that, for those reasons, there’s nothing the district can do unless the police make an arrest.
“People need to understand this happened off campus and the school district, we’ve done everything we can to ensure the safety of all our students,” McCutchen said in defense of the school district. “And never would we condone something of that matter.”
But the victim says he’s been bullied and frequently harassed at school, even after the attack.
“I had kids pretty much saying that I deserve to be dead and that he should have killed me,” he said.
He adds that he doesn’t feel safe at school, and believes it’s only a matter of time before he again is targeted because of his gender identity.
“It’s definitely going to happen again,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.”
For the second time, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit from University of Wyoming sorority members who challenged the admission of a transgender woman, arguing that she did not meet the definition of the word "woman."
"Having considered the issues presented (again), we find that the majority of the claims must be dismissed on the grounds that this Court still may not interfere with the sorority's contractually valid interpretation of its own bylaws," U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson wrote in his ruling.
The case began in 2023, when six members of the University of Wyoming’s Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter sued the sorority for admitting Artemis Langford, a transgender woman, and allowing her to use the campus house’s common areas -- though not live there -- according to Wyoming Public Media.
Austin police are investigating whether an assault on a transgender woman and a male bystander at Barton Springs, a popular Austin swimming spot, was a hate crime. The incident occurred on July 26, when three men began flirting with the woman’s friends and then allegedly harassed her after she approached them.
"They said something along the lines of 'I don't support that lifestyle,' while pointing at me, which upset all three of us," said the transgender woman, whose name is being withheld for safety and privacy reasons, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as "preliminary," critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
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