Republicans and Democrats alike have supported sending direct payments to Americans to help them financially during the pandemic. Now, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, wants to make the idea permanent by sending regular checks to parents with children.

From 2007 to 2017, James Caspian worked two days a week as a psychotherapist at a private gender clinic for adults in London. During that period, he noticed a shift in the patients seeking or undergoing medical treatments and surgeries to identify as the opposite sex. They were getting younger, and instead of men, Caspian began seeing mostly girls, many with complex mental health issues.

“We were seeing something different happening, and it was happening fast,” Caspian said. “There was no research into it.”

A Focus on the Family news outlet remains locked out of Twitter two weeks after the social media platform deemed one of its posts “hateful.” The tweet referred to assistant health secretary nominee Dr. Rachel Levine as “a man who believes he is a woman.”

A group of U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement on Jan. 25 showing support for LGBT youth and condemning bullying against them, saying, “God is on your side.” LGBT advocates and conservative Catholics disagree over the significance of the statement and whether it represented a drift from the church’s stance on sexuality.

At least six state legislatures are considering laws to protect children from experimental transgender treatments—putting them on a collision course with the Biden administration.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the federal government executed a female convict for the first time in nearly seven decades. Her sentence invigorated public debate over the death penalty and raised questions about the role of a suspect’s past trauma in criminal sentencing.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, was convicted in 2008 of strangling 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Missouri, who was eight months pregnant, and cutting the premature baby out of its mother’s womb. The baby girl lived and turned 16 on Dec. 16.

The Bear and the Moon by Matthew Burgess: A curious little bear spots something “red as a berry and round like the moon” with a long silver string attached to it. The balloon goes everywhere with him, providing quiet company and new excitement, seeming to smile back at him like a friend. But one day, it pops. The bear desperately tries to fix it, to no avail, and sorrow and loneliness set in. Nature has a way of providing comfort, and the bear realizes that all good things are a gift, and loss is not always a result of bad behavior.