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Transitioning later in life can feel isolating. One social group wants to change that
(From left to right) Portrait of Nicole Brownstein, Bernie Wagenblast, and Patrick Buenaventura at Wagenblast’s home in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
Gabby Jones for NPR
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(From left to right) Portrait of Nicole Brownstein, Bernie Wagenblast, and Patrick Buenaventura at Wagenblast’s home in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
Gabby Jones for NPR
When Bernie Wagenblast went to her first PROUDLY Me! meeting, she had no plans to transition.
She was in her late 50s, working as a radio announcer and using what she calls her “guy voice.” Then, she found the New Jersey-based support group for trans and nonbinary people of all ages. “I started it with the hope that it would be enough,” says Wagenblast, “and I wouldn’t have to go any further.”
At the time, her biggest fear with fully, publicly coming out was losing her life partner.
It’s a big fear for many older trans people who aren’t out, says Leigh Mann, a gender-affirming voice therapist and the former co-facilitator of PROUDLY Me!. Mann says that when people weigh the risks of coming out, “there’s a calculus that happens – and it’s unique for every person.” Personal safety, for example, is part of everyone’s calculus. When you pair that with the jeopardy of losing your spouse, contact with your children, or even your job, “it just gets exponentially more complicated.”
A night she calls ‘her Cinderella Story’
Wagenblast’s personal calculus shifted the night of the PROUDLY Me! semi-formal annual award ceremony. “In years past, I had always gone in a jacket and tie, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that this time.” So she reached out to her older trans mentor, another PROUDLY Me! member.
Her mentor instructed her to stop by a Halloween store and buy a cheap wig and a pair of heels. “You come down to my house with the wig and the heels, I’ve got a dress for you, I’ll do your makeup, and you’ll go to this event as your true self.”
Nicole Brownstein adds a necklace to Bernie’s Wagenblast’s outfit.
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Nicole Brownstein adds a necklace to Bernie’s Wagenblast’s outfit.
Gabby Jones for NPR
Mentor Nicole Brownstein has done many of these makeovers for other trans women who’ve come to her in the same position. She’s helped all of them. “It’s like a big movie production,” says Brownstein. “I have them sit in a chair facing away from the mirror and then have them turn around.” In that moment when they first look at themselves, Brownstein sees the same expression that she saw in herself all those years ago: “to finally be able to see yourself as you’ve always envisioned yourself.”
That night, Wagenblast decided that she could and would socially transition. In the process, her greatest fear came true. Her marriage of 42 years came to an end.
“This person who was and is my best friend is no longer part of my daily life. That’s terribly difficult,” she says. “But friendships have become far more important in my life.”
Friendships like the one she has with Brownstein, who’s 77. Wagenblast and Brownstein belong to a close group of trans women who will regularly get together for dinner and drinks. “Just a group of girls going out to spend a nice evening together,” says Brownstein.
A chance for intergenerational friendships
While the PROUDLY Me! support group does have members of all ages, many love it specifically because of Wagenblast and Brownstein – and the others navigating this later in life.
This is especially true for Patrick Buenaventura. When they went to their first meeting, they lamented starting their journey at the age of 53. Until Brownstein shared that she began transitioning in her 60s – and then other members followed suit.
Portrait of Patrick Buenaventura wearing their award ceremony attire at Bernie’s house in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
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Portrait of Patrick Buenaventura wearing their award ceremony attire at Bernie’s house in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
Gabby Jones for NPR
That’s when it clicked for Buenaventura. “We all have our own journeys and we have our own timelines. This just happens to be mine – and I’m right on time. When I was supposed to transition is now.”
PROUDLY Me! also creates a space for younger and older trans people to come together in unexpected ways. Buenaventura remembers one college-aged person who came up to them and said that it was nice to see older trans folks, “because they couldn’t imagine their life when they were older.”
On the flipside, they’ve also learned from younger members to be less concerned with passing. “They’re like, ‘I will dress how I want. If I want to be a trans man or transmasculine, it doesn’t mean I have to wear a suit and tie. If I want to wear a skirt, I’ll wear a skirt.’ They’re defining themselves, and not letting the world tell them who to be or how to be.”
Without a community like PROUDLY Me!, it’s easier to feel isolated at any age. Kristi, who’s 65, requested anonymity since she’s not out as trans to friends and family.
She longs for closer connections to other trans women, but says she hesitates to join support groups since she hasn’t taken certain steps – like socially transitioning, starting hormone therapy or getting gender-affirming surgery. “I don’t present myself fully as a woman,” says Kristi. “And I don’t want people to say, ‘well, let’s ignore her. She’s not part of us, really.’ “
Currently, Kristi has no plans to socially transition. And she wishes there was a stronger community for people like her – people who don’t know when they’ll take those steps, or if they’ll ever take them. “Am I not going far enough? Am I not courageous enough to come out and be a woman?” Kristi routinely asks herself these questions. But then she’ll tell herself: “there are people who don’t feel compelled to do that. And that doesn’t make the journey any less real.”
(From left to right) Portrait of Patrick Buenaventura, Bernie Wagenblast, and Nicole Brownstein, wearing their award ceremony attire at Wagenblast’s house in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
Gabby Jones for NPR
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Gabby Jones for NPR
(From left to right) Portrait of Patrick Buenaventura, Bernie Wagenblast, and Nicole Brownstein, wearing their award ceremony attire at Wagenblast’s house in Cranford, NJ, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024.
Gabby Jones for NPR
It’s been about a year since Bernie Wagenblast socially transitioned. And she’s still reveling in her new life. “To finally be living it for the first four or five months, it was like, ‘Pinch me. I’m afraid this is a dream, and that I’m going to wake up.’ “
Wagenblast is 67 now. Sometimes, she thinks about what it would’ve been like to come out earlier. To be a teenage girl, or a woman in her 20s.
But mostly, she’s just glad to be out now.
Candidates in California’s volatile race for governor will meet Wednesday night for the first televised debate since Eric Swalwell dropped out, each looking to seize momentum in the tight contest.
The debate, being held at the television studio of KRON4 in San Francisco, will include four Democrats and two Republicans who are tightly bunched in recent polls, with many voters still undecided less than six weeks before the June 2 primary.
Mr. Swalwell, a Democrat, had just begun to emerge as a Democratic front-runner when his campaign swiftly collapsed after he was accused of sexual assault in news reports on April 10.
Candidates have taken relatively few risks so far in debates around the state, but every candidate is now eyeing a chance to jump to the front of the pack.
“Even though we have seen some movement in the last couple of weeks, it continues to be a fairly crowded, fractured field,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. “So candidates need to be able to grab attention in a debate like this.”
The debate comes as Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former California attorney general, has enjoyed a surge of support in polls since Mr. Swalwell dropped out of the race.
Mr. Becerra and Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, did not originally meet the threshold to participate in Wednesday’s debate when Mr. Swalwell was running. But they both qualified after receiving enough support in a follow-up poll that debate organizers commissioned once Mr. Swalwell had dropped out.
The other Democrats scheduled to participate are Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, and Katie Porter, a former congresswoman, each of whom have been polling near the top of the Democratic field for several weeks. The Republicans in the debate are Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by President Trump, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County.
All candidates run on the same ballot in California’s nonpartisan primary, with the two who receive the most votes advancing to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. The large number of Democratic candidates has created fear among state party leaders that their voters could splinter, potentially allowing two Republicans to sweep the primary in this heavily Democratic state.
The odds of that happening have decreased since Mr. Swalwell dropped out and another Democrat, Betty Yee, withdrew on Monday. But Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, still believes there are too many Democrats in the race and has urged those lagging in polls to end their campaigns. (The actual ballot will include 61 candidates for governor, most of whom are completely unknown to voters.)
The messy race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits, has played out as the most unpredictable contest California has seen in a generation. It has attracted a sprawling field but no one with the star power of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or the political might of Mr. Newsom or former Gov. Jerry Brown.
Much of California’s Democratic establishment is still figuring out whom to back in the turbulent race.
Mr. Newsom has not endorsed anyone, saying he trusts voters to elect someone “who reflects the values and direction Californians believe in.” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker from San Francisco, and Senator Alex Padilla also have not announced their favorites. Senator Adam Schiff endorsed Mr. Swalwell earlier this year but quickly withdrew his support after the accusations against him were published.
On Tuesday, Ms. Yee endorsed Mr. Steyer, praising his work to fight climate change and engage young voters. Mr. Steyer has swamped his competitors with a raft of advertising by pouring $134 million from his personal fortune into his campaign.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Becerra, whose campaign had appeared to be flailing until Mr. Swalwell dropped out, received the endorsement of Robert Rivas, the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly. Mr. Rivas said he had encouraged Mr. Becerra to run for governor because he was impressed by his work as California’s attorney general during President Trump’s first term.
“He understands both the policy and the politics,” Mr. Rivas said in an interview. “And he has a track record, in my opinion, of delivering results under pressure.”
The 90-minute debate on Wednesday begins at 7 p.m. PT and will be broadcast and streamed by KRON and other California stations.
Virginians approved a new congressional map on Tuesday that would aggressively gerrymander the state in the Democrats’ favor, giving the party as many as four more U.S. House seats.
The new map draws eight safely Democratic districts and two competitive districts that lean Democratic, according to a New York Times analysis of 2024 presidential results. It leaves just one safe Republican seat, compared with the five seats the G.O.P. holds on the current map.
The proposed map was drawn by Democratic state legislators and approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. It eliminates three Republican-held seats in part by slicing the densely populated suburbs in Arlington and Fairfax Counties and reallocating their overwhelmingly Democratic voters into five congressional districts, some stretching more than a hundred miles into Republican areas.
Perhaps the most extreme new district is the Seventh, which begins at the Potomac River and stretches to the west and south in a manner that resembles a pair of lobster claws. Several well-known Virginia Democrats have already announced their candidacies and begun campaigning in the district.
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel listens during a news conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday in Washington.
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with payments of at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to people affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist groups.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.
The civil rights group faces charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought by the Justice Department in Alabama, where the organization is based.
The indictment came shortly after SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its program to pay informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement.
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”
Blanche said the money was passed from the center through two different bank accounts before being loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups, which also included the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The group never disclosed to donors details of the informant program, he said.
“They’re required to under the laws associated with a nonprofit to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing,” he said.
The indictment includes details on at least nine unnamed informants were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s. Within the SPLC, they were known as field sources or “the Fs,” according to the indictment. One informant was paid more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the indictment said. Another was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
The center has been targeted by Republicans
The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.
The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.
The SPLC has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.
The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.
House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
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