Following a hack by a self-referred "gay furry hacker" organization named SiegedSec, the Heritage Foundation found that two gigabytes of their internal data leaked to the internet. The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank within the United States known for their stances against trans rights and abortion. The organization has recently published a manifesto for America known as Project 2025 which catalyzed this hack.

At first the Foundation denied the attack and indicated that the only information obtained was public facing, per a Cyberscoop article, while ironically still calling the action as criminal.

[SiegedSec] stumbled upon a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public-facing website owned by a contractor. The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of both Heritage and non-Heritage contributors, as well as article comments and the IP address of the commenter.

[The story of a hack] is a false narrative and an exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.

What started as a cafeteria food fling in Payson, Utah became yet another fracas over the allegations of ‘furry behavior’ in schools. This ultimately led to online rumors and frustrations about alleged attacks committed by the ‘furries’ on students. Bolstered by frustrations on social media, a handful of students and their parents performed a walk out of their school on April 17.

An older furry by the name of Stroodle was interviewed by ABC4 [EU/UK folk: try this], and said that expression is important, but sometimes studies should come first.

It’s crazy that it’s escalated to this point that these kids are being so distracting to their peers that their peers want to stage a walkout [...] So to have the next generation muddy our name and not represent us very well, it’s kind of disappointing.

Continue doing things you like, continue dressing up, continue making art. But maybe let’s keep it out of school hours?

Here’s a science fiction limited-series comic that came to us from CEX last year: Josif 1957. “You know about Laika, the Cosmonaut dog sent into orbit on Sputnik 2. But no one knows about Josif, the first gorilla in space! Born on Josif Stalin’s birthday and subjected to terrible genetic experiments, Josif soon grew far too powerful. The leadership of the Soviet Union did all they could to stop him. But not everything went as planned!” It’s written by Davide Barzi, and illustrated by a talented young Italian artist, Fabiano Ambu.

image c. 2024 CEX Publishing

Furlandia announced on February 23 that Ursa Major Award-winning furry author Mary E. Lowd was removed as a guest of honor, citing her use of artificial intelligence to create her work’s cover art and the ensuing backlash.

Despite the strong response to her use of AI, the announcement’s second paragraph seemed to suggest that Furlandia is neutral on AI art itself:

Dear Furlandia Community,

Earlier this week we made the difficult decision to remove our Writing Guest of Honor for 2024, Mary E. Lowd. This is a decision we do not make lightly, and is all the more difficult for us as they have been a long time supporter of Furlandia. So why have we done this? It comes down to their decision to use AI-generated art as a tool in the creation of things such as book covers, the professional backlash that has accompanied it, and the general attitude towards this topic in the fandom.

Undoubtedly the topic of AI-generated art is incredibly divisive and controversial in our fandom at this time, and a lot of people have very strong opinions about it. We’ve made this decision not to push a particular opinion, but because our goal is to bring people together to celebrate the furry fandom, of which artists are the undeniable backbone. Continuing with Mary as a [Guest of Honor] would have made the people understandably uncomfortable and that’s not something we want. This is not an easy thing for any convention to have to do and we hope anyone who’s disappointed will understand.

Thank you,
Furlandia Executive Staff

The Insider covered news that broke on a Russian furry YouTuber’s telegram group about a Russian My Little Pony meet called the Mi Amore Fest. The gathering was allegedly ordered to disperse by the Federal Security Service (FSB). This is two months following when the cartoon show was deemed as mature content by the government. While a reasoning has not been given for this rating, rumors are that this was due to the rainbow mane and tail of the character Rainbow Dash and the growing animosity of Russia toward the symbol of the rainbow and its ties to the LGBTQ+ movement.

Legislator Justin Humphrey of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives submitted a proposed bill (OK Bill 3084) which would indicate that a student identified as a furry would be removed from the classroom by their parents, or failing that, animal control.

Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall pick the student up from the school, or animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.

This is another political act based on a rumor that started two years ago about cat litter being utilized by students 'pretending to be cats'. This is the second proposed law in Oklahoma to try and remove furry students from the classroom that also had the misuse of the terminology of “anthropomorphic behavior”. It is also the second year in a row that such a law has been proposed.

We came across a brand-new comic from Boom! Studios called Animal Pound. It goes like this: “When animals grow tired of being caged, killed, and sold off-it’s only a matter of time before they’ve had enough… When an uprising puts a pound in control of the animals, they quickly find themselves as comrades, united against everything that walks on two legs. But with this newfound power comes a sudden challenge: how best to lay the groundwork for this new democracy as they write their first constitution!” Written by Tom King (Love Everlasting) and illustrated by award-winning artist Peter Gross (The Books of Magic), Animal Pound comes to comic shops later this week.

image c. 2023 Boom! Studios

On June 9th, 2023 the furry world was baffled by a newsletter from Washington state’s convention Anthro Northwest that has since been removed from the internet. On their social media page this letter was headered with the statement “Something had to be said”. The letter opened as if it is about to take an action that would cause controversy to protect their gathering, but then moved forward with meandering prose about the dangers of ostracizing others based on accusation, which they later refer to be related to a phenomenon that has been deemed as “cancel culture”. However, in its statement it also didn’t really announce any action that the organization would take to combat these issues it deemed important to state are occurring.

This meandering and winding prose about “seeing through the glass darkly” certainly caught a lot of attention. Because of the vagueness and the context of being an official statement it led many to speculate what could have prompted the post that read more like a defensive personal blog. Soon other furry conventions and organizations would capitalize on the public relations blunder by making parodies of their own.

But perhaps at the end of the day, the glass that ANW’s chair, Gabriel Felix, was seeing through dimly was that of the house he resided in. The shattered pieces reflected upon him for a past where he ignored his own currently presented ideals. Because while the chair asks the fandom to be slower to judge and to be more judicious with our actions to outcast others among us, on May 8th, 2019 his convention had banned the Furlandia soon-to-be-chair at the time, Richard “Saphy” Thomas, from being able to attend ANW.

Note for clarity: Saphy was the promoted to chair from vice-chair of Furlandia following their 2019 gathering just after he was banned from ANW, the current chair in 2023 (Rex) is not banned from ANW. To make the story more clear the headline working verbiage around the titles have been updated in the article.

On May 24th, Megaplex, a furry convention that has taken place in Florida for two decades, had announced that for the first time restricted attendance to those 18 and over only. This was done in response to a recently passed law, SB 1438, which expands the authority of the government to revoke business licenses and impose fines in response to situations where children are exposed to live performances deemed “problematic for general consumption”.

Many have raised concerns about recent changes in Florida legislation. After reviewing Florida SB 1438 it has been decided that for legal reasons and protection of our attendees, our venue, and the overall convention, Megaplex 2023 attendees must be 18 years of age at the time of registration pickup.

Megaplex has welcomed younger fandom members and their families since its inception and making this change was very difficult. The Code of Conduct has been updated to reflect this change and emails are going out to those affected.

While this change impacts the 2023 convention, it is unsure if this will have to continue for future years. It is our hope that this change is temporary and that we can welcome members of all ages back next year. With this in mind, the public decorum portion of the Code of Conduct as well as standards for programming, attire, and behavior in convention space will not be changing and will continue to be enforced as it has been in the past.

This decision has been a difficult one, but Megaplex has not forgotten about or abandoned our younger fandom members and is looking into options for events and activities to include all age ranges and their family members.

Many have also voiced concerns regarding CS/HB 1521. After legal review, it has been concluded that this does not affect us as our convention is held in a private venue. We are talking with the hotel about the possibility of offering gender neutral restrooms in the convention space. If we are able to offer this we will have them clearly marked on our convention map.

If you have any additional questions regarding any cancellations requested, please feel free to contact us at [our registration team email].
Megaplex; May 2023

A proposed amendment to a Montana bill to protect minors from pornographic materials, and assist in the lubrication of civil lawsuits against corporate adult entertainment entities, has updated the language to include in the restricted materials to include materials that deal with the concepts of transgenderism and also “transspecism”.

It makes this amendment in a clunky manner, basically placing this “transspecies” word under the umbrella of “transgenderism” and never adding how Montana would define what “transspecies” itself means within this law. This can be found in Section 7 [Glossary of terms], section D [Material that is defined as harmful to minors], subsection L [“Transgenderism”]

(l)”Transgenderism” means a person being in the mental state of believing to the person is transgender or transspecies.

The first session of the Oklahoma State Senate has put forth a bill penned by State Senator Shane Jett that focuses on education in the state’s public school system and the allowing of endowments for a parent to pull their kids from public schools.

The 20 page document caught attention on social media by furries due to a highlighting of the law’s claim of a district that could be deemed as problematic because of furry activities.

“Trigger district” means a school district in this state where any of the following concepts or activities have been advocated or tolerated:
[...]
g. the presence of any school employee or volunteer engaged in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries,

There are 12 other items that also would qualify a school as a proclaimed trigger district. Some of the ones not covered in previous statute include things such as: promotion of Marxist ideology, disparaging the 2nd amendment, promoting animal rights activism, promoting social and emotional learning, climate change ideology that disparages the oil, gas, and farming industry, and instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation that creates 'gender confusion'.

When a school is deemed as a trigger district, it allows the parent to pull their child from the school to fund their education in a private manner through a program outlined in the law known as “Oklahoma Parent Empowerment Act for Kids [OK PEAK]”

DenFur has announced that furry musician, Pepper Coyote, will not be attending, or performing at their 2022 convention. This is in response to videos, and tweets made by the musician himself, that showed him in attendance at a Center for Political Innovation assembly in Chicago over the weekend of August 6th.

While describing itself as an anti-imperialist organization, the CPI led the meet by flying flags which included the infamous Z insignia that is being used by the Russian forces occupying the country of Ukraine in the current war there. The CPI Twitter account retweets regularly from sources that Twitter has denoted as Russian state-affiliated media.

Update (Aug 12): Eurofurence has also removed Pepper Coyote from their performance schedule.

Update (Aug 21): The CPI has dissolved following accusation of sexual misconduct around leader Caleb Maupin. In response, PepperCoyote has simply stated he's no longer a member of the CPI.

We just stumbled across Animal Castle, a new comic series from Ablaze Comics that takes a familiar fable… in a new direction. This is from Bleeding Cool: “On the Farm, all animals were equal. But in the Castle, some are more equal than others… Nestled in the heart of a farm forgotten by men, the Animal Castle is ruled with an iron hoof by President Silvio. The bull and his dog militia savor their power, while the other animals are exhausted by work until the arrival of the mysterious Azelard, a traveling rat who will teach them the secrets of civil disobedience.” Brought to us by Writer Xavier Dorison and artist Felix Dele.

image c. 2022 Ablaze Comics

In late January 2022, the internet was flooded with news stories about a concerned parent in a school meeting in Michigan. However the news of the inaccuracy of the salacious rumor didn’t seem to reach one State Senator in Nebraska by the name of Bruce Bostelman of District 23. He instead took the State Senate floor and defecated it with the rumor he, like the woman before him, was appalled by.

The OPB reports that Benjamin Smith, known in the fandom under his fursona name “Polybun”, faces murder and attempted murder charges after he confronted protesters before opening fire into the crowd. Four were injured and one, Brandy Knightly, a sixty year old woman, lost her life in the attack.

Connections to the fandom were fished out by the local Portland community furries as images of the attacker made the rounds. One of the first to report on this to social media was Triss Winters, a furry left-wing activist out of Portland who recalled when Polybun was removed from one of his house parties a decade ago due to him brandishing a knife and threatening to stab someone who took a photo of him at the event.