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The taxpayers are paying for this crisis, but they didn’t create this crisis.” – Clermont County Commissioner David Painter, announcing a lawsuit that claims wholesale pharmaceutical distributors fueled the heroin epidemic.

Ali walks along McMicken Avenue in Over-the-Rhine, looking for someone willing to pay her for sex. It's what she does to get money to buy fentanyl, and to keep a roof over her head. She’s 25 and addicted to the synthetic opiate. She used to take heroin, but now she prefers the more powerful and more dangerous synthetic. She’s having trouble finding someone to pick her up on this steamy afternoon. Ali already has changed her dress today. She’s wearing a metallic-studded, purple mini dress. She knows that sometimes her customers want someone pretty. Other times, it doesn’t seem to matter. Tall and fine-boned, Ali could be a model. But she is emaciated. She has bruises on her neck from shooting up. She runs a hand through her long, thick hair, grasps it and lifts it from her shoulders before letting it fall back down. Then she does it again. She’s getting anxious. Withdrawal symptoms are starting to set in and Ali thinks she might vomit on the sidewalk if she doesn’t get a fix. Ali darts across the street, vanishes for a few minutes and returns with her drug in hand. She hides behind a couple of trash cans and uses it. About 15 minutes later, she’s back, feeling better, walking the street in the hot summer sun.

The girl is wearing pink shorts and a bright blue T-shirt that reads, “I’m a Dream Believer.”

Lizzie hugs her son. He’s cold and clammy, sweating through his white T-shirt. Something isn’t right. He’s using again, she thinks.

Possible heroin overdose, woman on the corner with her eyes rolling in the back of her head.” – Police scanner call, corner of Melrose and Lincoln.

Their 3-year-old daughter was in the back seat.

“You’re not going to change me,” he says.

On some days, even before she calls their names, Judge Gwen Bender can tell why the defendants are in Courtroom A. Their bones look as if they might poke through their skin. Their eyes are sunken, their hair a tangled mess. Some are unsteady on their feet. Others scratch at sores on their arms. A few lean on the table in front of the judge as if it is the only thing holding them up. “This is a heroin case?” the judge asks. This morning, as on most mornings, one in four felony cases on this Hamilton County court docket is directly connected to heroin. There’s a 70-year-old Army veteran who stashed a bag of syringes in a basement crawl space. A Taylor Mill woman who tried to hide needles in her vagina after shooting up. A St. Bernard woman who overdosed when a friend injected her with heroin. The woman from St. Bernard looks confused, as if she’s unsure how she got here. She was on the floor of her friend’s house, barely breathing, less than 12 hours ago. Now she’s standing before the judge, eyes sunken and hair tangled, leaning hard against the table.

It’s a little after sunrise on the first day of another week, and Cincinnati is waking up again with a heroin problem.

There were concerns (since realized) that a Trump administration would attempt to “erase” transgender Americans through federal means.

Bow says judges who deny a transgender petitioner’s request aren’t necessarily doing so out of bigotry. “Clearly there are some folks out there who, for religious or other reasons, continue to have an irrational prejudice against trans people,” she says. “But in a lot of cases, judges simply don’t understand whether they have the authority to do this. That’s why ‘shopping’ is a constant topic of discussion in trans groups.” Through online forums and organizations like Tyler Transgender Support Group, people in counties across Texas trade information about which local judges are well-versed in trans issues and which aren’t, and advise petitioners to schedule their court appearances according to who’s on the docket on a given day.

On the evening of Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, Hannah Morris’s guests arrived at her colorful Tyler home, a place she calls “the unofficial LGBT center of Tyler.” A 32-year-old legal secretary who’s been involved in local theater, Morris and her then-wife had invited friends—mostly other members of Tyler’s millennial queer community—to an election watch party. Morris passed out spiked lemonade and snacks while TV news coverage played in the background. The invite had suggested dress that could serve as either “cocktail attire or mourning clothes, depending on how the evening went.”