Advocacy groups are demanding California lawmakers cough up $26 million in funds for access to “gender-affirming care” despite concerns about a multi-billion dollar state budget deficit.

In a packed committee hearing Monday, statehouse Democrats explored further ways to fight off what they described as “a significant threat” to care access for transgender Californians from the Trump administration.

“Since the very beginning the Trump administration has meticulously, inhumanely attacked the LGBTQ communities, specifically the trans community,” said Sen. Caroline Menjivar. “We believe everyone deserves the right to be treated equally and fairly.”

Trump has been targeting federal funding of services such as puberty blockers or surgery designed to help a person become a specific gender.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a declaration in December that such treatments are unsafe, which California sued over.

Last year, the state authorized $15 million to defray costs of providing coverage affected by the finalized rule. Now, California lawmakers want to do more to prepare for the pending funding cuts, such as propping up a state-based framework to pay for that coverage.

Lawmakers also considered using CalRx, a state initiative that produces lower-cost prescription drugs, to make any needed gender-affirming drugs.

One finalized federal rule already classifies “gender-affirming” procedures as non-essential health benefits.

The federal government also proposed rules to restrict access for youth through Medicare and Medicaid — health insurance offered through the government for older and low-income Americans. Hospitals and medical providers enrolled in those programs would be prohibited from offering gender transition services to youth, and those funds can’t be used to pay for such services.

“So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.

LGBT advocacy organizations claim the federal efforts have dissuaded many doctors from offering transgender services and therefore put lives at risk. JM Jaffe, executive director of Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, said Trump’s funding cuts have had a real impact on staffing and prevented them from applying to federally sourced contracts.

“In a state budget of over $300 billion, our $26 million ask is a small investment to protect and stabilize access,” Sacramento Pride said on social media.

However, opponents of the state funding criticized lawmakers for excluding voices who are concerned about the effects of “gender-affirming” care.

“When millions in taxpayer dollars and irreversible medical decisions for children are on the line, lawmakers have a duty to hear all the evidence, not just one side,” Women Are Real, which advocates for women’s sex-based rights, said in a statement to The Post.

Assemblymember Joe Patterson, a Republican, said at the hearing he thinks California is going in the wrong direction on the issue.

“The realization that a lot of western society has abandoned transgender affirming care for children, California continues to go full steam ahead on it,” he said.

The deadline for lawmakers to pass a state budget is June 15.

For all her family and friends knew, Carla Maribel Rodriguez’s much-younger mystery boyfriend was a ”sweetheart.”

But the 48-year-old was hiding a big secret that’s only been exposed by the shocking way her life ended, allegedly by multiple gunshots at the hands of the same man she’d been gushing like a teenager about.

Her alleged killer, arrested at the couple’s rented $2.4M Beverly Grove home Sunday, is Emily Emerald Vogdt, 27, a seemingly troubled, trans man who’d been bankrolling the couple’s flashy lifestyle.

Police had been called to the couple’s home on La Peer Avenue, near Third Street, Beverly Grove, just before 8:30 a.m. after reports of gunfire and found Rodriguez had been shot numerous times.

She would die a short time later in the hospital.

Her beloved dog, Prince, who she’d had immortalized on the wall as a portrait, was also allegedly shot dead.

Vogdt is being held at Century Regional Detention Center — an all-female jailhouse — in Lynwood on $3,075,000 bail, which was increased from an initial $2 million due to the seriousness of the crime.

Rodriguez’s brother Joshua Vasquez, 39, told The Post investigators have told his family that Vodgt used his middle name ”Emerald” and was transitioning to become a man.

Vasquez said investigators described Vogdt as “very possessive and obsessed” with his sister – and believes Rodriguez may have been planning to leave the relationship.

Police have alleged the killing stemmed from a domestic dispute.

Detectives were seen removing rifle cases from the couple’s black Lamborghini Urus.

The couple, who’d been dating for almost a year, embraced an extravagant lifestyle, with a lavish Christmas and New Year’s spent in Aspen and Solvang, followed by a sojourn to Mammoth in February, and a decadent three days at the five-star Ritz Carlton, with spectacular views over the cliffs of Dana Point.

Rooms at the hotel start at $1,000 – and her friends were quick to comment: ”Luxurious… that’s fancy… happy for you girl.”

Just three weeks later, Rodriguez would be dead, allegedly murdered in the most horrific fashion at the hands of the new lover she had described as the peanut butter to my jelly.”

Friends and family had assumed she was dating a man, heavily tattooed and with a wispy beard, always wearing sunglasses and trucker hats in photographs.

They were shocked to discover the caring, divorced massage therapist, who moved from Modesto to Los Angeles in December 2024, had a boytoy lover, saying she’d always dated men.

Close friend, Jacqueline Dobson, 64, told the Post: ‘I never met her boyfriend. I didn’t even get a name.”

‘‘She told me he was wonderful to her… “he’s peanut butter to my jelly” and “I’m in love.”’

But Dobson admits she’d grown suspicious of the couple’s extravagant lifestyle of holidays, fine dining – while jaunting through Los Angeles in a black Lamborghini SUV worth about $250,000.

”I was always trying to figure out how they were able to do all these extravagant things,” she said.

”They were living quite a rich and famous life.’’

Records show Vogdt stood to inherit a family trust valued at approximately $2.9 million, tied to a commercial property on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

The trust was established by Vogdt’s grandmother, Paula Vogdt, and passed to her daughter, Anita Vogdt, in 2013.

Anita died in 2022, leaving Vogdt as the sole heir. Despite this, Rodriguez had told her mother she was paying $1,000 per month to live in the Airbnb property the couple shared.

A dog sitter who had her own room at the home confirmed the couple’s odd relationship, with the pair living in separate bedrooms. She also said she had been unaware Vogdt was biologically female.

Vodgt has a husky called ”Lucy.”

Attorney Steven Tamer, who represented Vogdt in the trust matter and served as successor trustee, declined to comment.

“I don’t have authority to speak regarding the case,” he said.

Rodriguez’s aunt, Marcella Garcia, 59, said the family had never met Vogdt, and knew almost nothing about the relationship.

”No one in the family had met this person,’ she said.

Garcia said she had assumed her niece was dating a man and was alarmed by photos she later saw online.

”He was a little strange and weird looking,” she said.

Rodriguez had told her she was ‘trying something different’ but gave no further details.

‘I told her I was pleased for her as long as she was happy,’ Garcia said.

Vogdt appeared in court Thursday, but her arraignment was postponed to April 29.

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Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney described in an interview Tuesday feeling “scared” that the backlash against her affiliation with Bud Light could spark real-world violence after conservatives criticized the activist.

Mulvaney spoke about “Beergate” on Monica Lewinsky’s “Reclaiming” podcast, during which the influencer discussed the 2023 controversy after partnering with Bud Light after a “really big bidding war between two big companies.”

The company sent over cans with the influencer’s face to celebrate Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood,” a collaboration that triggered intense backlash and calls for a boycott from conservative commentators and country music figures.

Lewinsky brought up the example of singer Kid Rock using a rifle to shoot several dozen Bud Light cans while declaring, “F— Bud Light and f— Anheuser-Busch!”

“What ended up happening was the far-right media and the powers that be that decided to make that America’s biggest problem of the moment, which was, ‘Why is a trans person on a can of beer?’” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney said the reaction was “humorous” at first but feared the threats from critics could become “real.”

“But then, what got scary was, like, real people that were then potentially influenced by that person or that content,” Mulvaney said.

“And that’s what I find really fascinating about some of the far right’s content that they’re putting out there or some of their philosophies or things that they’re promoting that then leads actual people to actual violence.” 

“And, so, I wasn’t scared of a country singer coming to my house to, you know, do something. I was scared of the people that listened to that [person],” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney compared the experience to the “Wicked” musical’s depiction of the misunderstood character Elphaba, a retelling of the Wicked Witch character’s story from the “Wizard of Oz.” 

“I think of the villainization of … I think about the animals in ‘Wicked’ because it’s like they needed a common enemy, and so they’re, like, ‘OK, great. Trans people.’ And then, with me, [it] felt very Elphaba, of here’s somebody that had the best of intentions and then, but, they needed that poster child,” Mulvaney said.

In January 2024, FOX Business reported that Bud Light sales fell nearly 30% in the months following the campaign.

The backlash became one of the most prominent corporate culture clashes in recent years, with Bud Light ultimately losing its position as America’s top-selling beer.

Mulvaney ignited new backlash last month after being cast as Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, in Broadway’s “Six the Musical.”

Despite the controversy, Mulvaney defended taking the role in the all-female cast.

“If I had to go viral and find myself in a far-right media firestorm and spend many years and many tears wondering why that was happening and trying desperately to get back to what I once loved, which was theater, I would do it all over again if it meant that I got to be on stage,” Mulvaney said.

One day in 2023, I was scrutinising my body in a full-length mirror.

I did this a lot, this tearful ritual of self-flagellation – but this time, I noticed something that had never been there before.

Cellulite, dappled along the backs of my thighs.

The tears started flowing, as they often did. I wasn’t crying with horror, though, but with happiness.

Two years before, I had come out as transgender. Ever since starting Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), I’d been experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions trying to reconcile my outer appearance with my inner sense of self – but seeing the cellulite on my thighs was a moment of sheer catharsis.

I finally felt at home in my body.

I knew all the messages sold to women and girls: that cellulite is unattractive and undesirable, that it should be eliminated. And yet, standing in front of the mirror, I didn’t feel any of the shame women are taught to feel.

Instead, I felt overjoyed and proud to be experiencing something that so many women experience.

In short, I felt gender euphoria.

But I certainly haven’t always felt this way – far from it.

My relationship with my body has always been complicated. As a child, I struggled with comfort eating and ended up overweight. Since then, I’ve dealt with persistent issues of body image.

Growing up, the mirror was my great enemy; it was the cudgel I used to punish myself for my (imagined) inadequacies.

This is an experience I share with lots of women – except that I first spent years of my life as a man.

I had always felt a sense of dissonance between how the world perceived me and how I perceived myself, and in puberty those issues only worsened. With each change I experienced – every new hair that sprouted on my body, every inch my shoulders grew – the gulf between the burgeoning woman I felt myself to be and the reality of my reflection widened.

Looking in the mirror felt like staring at a stranger.

Over the years, gender dysphoria manifested itself subtly in me, as a nebulous feeling of absence. I didn’t have any exposure to the trans experience so I didn’t have language that would help me describe that painful feeling of something missing.

But I felt disconnected from myself, and for years I couldn’t understand why.

When I interacted with the world outside my room, I struggled to understand the expectations ascribed to boys and men. When strangers called me ‘Sir’, I often asked myself who they could be talking to.

I spent years as a passive observer in my own life – and, consequently, spent decades dealing with persistent depression.

I truly felt as though nothing mattered. I had no investment in my own life.

Even when I came out as transgender in February 2021, aged 30, I remained in front of the mirror – because coming out only served to further complicate my relationship with my reflection.

I’d always been prone to negative self-comparison; but, while I was transitioning, this grew to include the impossible standards of feminine beauty levied upon women. ‘Your waist must be small, but not too small.’ ‘You must not have visible body hair.’ ‘You must sound, look, and act a certain way.’

I spent countless hours studying all the ways my body failed to meet the ideals of feminine beauty. I was ‘too fat’, ‘too broad’, ‘too masculine’.

It all left me feeling emotionally exhausted, depleted, and hopeless, and the irony – that comparing yourself unfavourably to other women is a common experience of womanhood – was lost on me.

I started HRT in June 2021 with the aim of raising my progesterone and oestrogen levels, and reducing my testosterone. Over the next few years, HRT slowly began to change my body in a myriad of ways – some expected, and others less so.

The redistribution of body fat, the softening of my features, the thickening of my hair.

These things came too slowly to notice any change from one day to the next, and I still contended with my reflection daily, continuing to find ways to compare myself negatively to others.

It was on one of these days, years into my treatment, that I first noticed the cellulite rippling down the backs of my thighs and cried.

I’d spent my life in a prison; now here I was, crying with joy over something many women have been taught to hate about themselves.

To me, the appearance of cellulite wasn’t some omen of undesirability. It was evidence that I was moving closer to a body I felt at home in.

And in that moment, I recognised the beauty in my experience as a trans person.

I may have lost the ease of navigating the world as the gender I was assigned at birth – but I had also gained so much. I’d been afforded the chance to know myself intimately, to become who I always was; and I could experience the feeling of watching my body slowly change into something that didn’t hurt so much to see.

I didn’t always know when I was suffering through gender dysphoria, but I certainly knew when I’d found relief from it. It was like I’d cast off a weight, and in place of that weight was gender euphoria. A storm of butterflies in my stomach. A smile that nearly broke my jaw.

Happiness. Bliss. Relief.

It’s been two and a half years since that day, and I cannot say my gender dysphoria is cured. If you’ve lived with body dysmorphia, you understand that your self-image can fluctuate from day to day.

I’ve heard it said by cis women over and over again – both on social media and in my day to day discussions with friends – that their trans sisters give them new perspectives on womanhood. 

That knowing and loving trans women helps them find new ways to appreciate the many joys of their gender, to divorce themselves from the insecurities packaged and sold to them as products.

And so my hope is that, in hearing my joy, in knowing my freedom, you can experience it for yourself. 

Perhaps the next time you look in the mirror and see the cellulite on your thighs, you’ll remember my story and the elation I felt; my hope is that you can learn to see it not as a burden but a bounty, and a reminder that it is a beautiful reflection of your womanhood staring unapologetically back at you.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk. 

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