It’s been difficult to keep up with the news since Jan. 20, as the attacks on our community keep coming. The same president who nominated the highest-ranking openly gay government official ever (Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary) is the same president who is killing transgender Americans via his incessantly cruel attacks on their humanity. (When you deny someone access to the bathroom, you deny their humanity.)

I have struggled to organize my thoughts about Trump 2.0. Instead, I am sharing anonymized anecdotes from people I know and love who have been adversely impacted by his cruelty. This is just a sampling of what Trump has wrought in barely three months. 

• A close friend with a transgender child abruptly packed up and left the country, driving to Canada. I had no idea until a cryptic social media post prompted me to call. Their trans child no longer felt safe in our country. My friend sold the family home, packed the car, and drove to Canada. My heart breaks for their beautiful family, now geographically separated because of Trump’s attacks. 

• Another friend in a high-ranking job was singled out by the MAGA social media mob. She was derided as a “DEI hire” simply because she’s a lesbian. The FBI came to her home and advised building a panic room. She now travels with armed security, something she never had to do before Trump. 

• A friend was offered a job by a major news outlet. The offer was rescinded after their boss discovered a nearly 10-year-old blog post they wrote that was critical of Trump. Yes, the mainstream media are caving to Trump’s threats. 

• Yet another friend in a senior civilian government post has been forced to fire longtime employees and remove any mention of the LGBTQ community (to which he belongs) from a government website. This includes important studies on LGBTQ health and wellness. 

• And another friend who was fired from her federal government job is struggling with depression, unable so far to find a new job after a career in public service that ended with a dismissal for no reason. 

Welcome to MAGA’s America, where public servants are ridiculed, threatened, and fired. Where mothers and fathers of transgender children are fleeing the country because their child fears being killed here. Where hard-working business leaders who happen to be LGBTQ or women or Black are targeted and doxed by Trump’s brainwashed, bigoted followers. Where one-time corporate “allies” are running like cowards from their DEI programming and support for the LGBTQ community. 

At the Blade, I have fielded multiple requests from sources asking that their names be removed from past news articles because they fear government retaliation merely for being publicly identified as LGBTQ. We’ve never needed a formal policy for such requests until Trump returned to power. After consulting with experts in journalism ethics, we have decided to take such requests on a case-by-case basis. We have a unique contract with our readers, very different from mainstream outlets like the Washington Post, and will find a workable solution as these questions arise. 

So now what? Those of us in a position to resist must do so. We must not normalize what’s happening to our country. Firebombing a governor’s residence; storming the U.S. Capitol; plotting to kidnap Democratic governors — none of this is normal or “OK,” as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a major understatement last weekend. 

Join the growing protest movement around the country. Call and write to your elected representatives urging them to oppose Trump’s agenda, from his stupidly reckless tariff policies to his anti-trans attacks. Attend local town halls with elected officials and denounce the mass firings of federal workers. Read and donate to your local media outlets doing their best to cover all of these attacks on democracy. 

And, perhaps most crucially, do what you can to support Democratic candidates running in the 2026 midterms. Our only hope of saving American democracy and the Constitution may be for Democrats to retake one or both houses of Congress next year. The Republicans have a narrow 220-213 majority. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee highlighted 35 GOP-held districts it is targeting in 2026; they only need to flip seven of those. The Senate will be a bigger challenge, though not impossible, as Democrats would need to flip four seats to take control. They have a good shot in Maine and North Carolina. With Trump’s plummeting approval ratings and an economy headed for recession, the Alaska and Ohio Senate races could also be competitive.

Stay engaged and informed. Reach out to friends who’ve lost their jobs to Elon Musk’s craven chainsaw approach to gutting the federal government. Do what you can to support and reassure the trans community that we have their backs. We know better than anyone that silence equals death. So find your voice and speak out. 

Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].

My name is Mijan. I’m a born and bred East Londoner, a child of immigrants, an ACT UP London/UK activist, and I live with HIV. ACT UP UK and our kin across the pond, ACT UP US, was founded to fight and champion rights of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. We are a global coalition that believes in Fund Healthcare Not Warfare, a transatlantic movement that demands global health justice and an end to military prioritisation over the health and wellbeing of human life. The threats we face are the same from funding cuts, state suppression, and queer erasure. U.S. or the U.K. we sing from the same hymn sheet: We will not stand by while our lives are at risk.

On April 8, eight of us ACT UP Activists disrupted Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Liaison Committee. We were peaceful and determined to execute our die-in. Security was almost as determined to make sure we didn’t. They strong-armed us out of parliament like we were a threat. We tried to begin our die-in, to make a statement for the lives at stake, but instead we were rammed out the revolving doors as we were leaving, which they ended up jamming and dumped on the stairs of Portcullis House. We made the best of a bad situation and laid on the dirty grounds — because this is what democracy looks like in the U.K. when it’s under attack.

Why were we there? Because we are scared and angry. Because we are regressing. Because AIDS cuts means death.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government is enacting the most drastic reduction in U.K. AID cuts we have seen in many years, slashing it from 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent by 2027. This is the lowest level of Official Development Assistance spending in years — and it’s being justified to increase defense spending. More missiles, fewer medicines. More tanks, fewer treatments. 

Starmer, you justify this under the guise of “security” — but whose security are you protecting? It’s not mine. I live with HIV, and I’m only alive today because of global health funding, funding that made treatment, programs, and vital research possible. Thanks to that support, HIV is no longer a death sentence for many of us. But that’s not the case for everyone.

Not everyone has the privilege of being born in countries like the U.K., where treatment is accessible and free. Many will die because of funding cuts. Many will lose loved ones. We will see HIV contraction rates rise. We will see preventable deaths increase.

Kier, what you are doing is wrong! What you are doing is horrible! What you are doing is deadly!

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to our world health experts. The World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that these cuts could cause over 10 million additional HIV infections and three million HIV-related deaths. A new modeling study published in the Lancet HIV by the Burnet Institute backs this up — projecting a 24 percent reduction in international HIV funding by 2026 if current trends continue. Twenty years of progress in HIV treatment and prevention could be wiped out by a single budget.

Deplorable.

Is this what Labour stands for? I thought this party would fight for us. 

HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects queer people and people of color — already marginalized communities who are now being discarded. Labour was created by and for people who lived on the fringe of society, the little guy. Labour is meant to empower, support and protect the vulnerable, not sacrifice them. Labour is meant to listen to the people, not silence them and ram them out like cattle to slaughter. Labour should be ashamed. You are not for the people.

We were there for a reason. We were there  because lives depend on it. We showed up because diplomacy failed. When we chose peaceful protest, we were met with aggression and suppression. That’s what we need to talk about too. Because this isn’t just about foreign aid anymore — this is also about our right to protest being attacked.

When activists are forced out of parliament for daring to peacefully protest against inhumane policies, it truly puts into perspective a dying democracy.

Democracy is no longer open to the people. Our ability to protest is now treated as a threat to power. Our democracy is under threat. And it’s not just from Tory strongmen. It’s from the very party that’s supposed to be on our side.

This Labour government has abandoned its principles and has abused people’s trust. That it will turn its back on migrants, on the poor, on queer people, on disabled people, and now — on people living with and at risk of HIV/AIDS. It is morally bankrupt.

Bombing your way to justice will not achieve equality. Ignoring a global health crisis and is not progressive. Get your priorities straight: Fund health care, not warfare. Invest in life, not death. Restore the 0.5 percent foreign aid commitment, and stop treating the most vulnerable lives on the planet as expendable.

Keir Starmer, you have blood on your hands. 

You may have pushed us out of parliament, but we will not be silenced.  We will be louder. We will be bolder. We will not let this die. ACT UP has always believed in one simple truth: SILENCE = DEATH.

Mijan is a pseudonym for an HIV-positive activist who believes that SILENCE = DEATH.

A concerning research directive is quietly circulating through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The directive, issued in response to presidential Executive Order 14187, calls for the National Institutes of Health to fund studies focused on “regret” and “detransition” among children who have accessed gender-affirming care. It explicitly demands that researchers avoid “subsidizing or incentivizing” such care – language that is both vague and deeply ideological.

President Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” was signed in January 2025 and frames all gender-affirming care for minors as inherently dangerous. It calls for an investigation into the “long-term side effects” of such care and restricts federal funding to any institution providing it. In effect, it lays the groundwork for a federally sanctioned research agenda that aims not to understand transgender health but to discredit it.

Behind the recent HHS memo lies a dangerous truth: The federal government is attempting to repurpose science as a tool for political ideology. If this directive proceeds, it will not only erode the credibility of public health research, but it will also put transgender lives at risk.

This warning is not hyperbole. The memo uses inflammatory language like “chemical and surgical mutilation” to describe standard gender-affirming treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery. These terms are not neutral. They are the rhetorical weapons of anti-trans movements, now embedded in federal policy language. Their use signals a chilling shift: science is no longer being asked to explore, understand, or improve lives. It is being asked to justify harm.

Let’s be clear: Regret following gender-affirming care is exceedingly rare. Evidence suggests that the regret rate among individuals who have had gender-affirming surgery is less than 1%, compared to a surgical regret prevalence of about 14% among the general population. Moreover, studies have found that when transgender people report regret following gender-affirming surgery, it is often related to external factors like lack of support from family and peers. 

The evidence is consistent and overwhelming: gender-affirming care, including gender-affirming surgery, improves mental health, reduces suicidality, decreases substance use, and affirms a person’s identity and autonomy. That’s why the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and every major medical organization in the United States recognize the safety, efficacy, and medical necessity of gender-affirming care when provided in accordance with established guidelines.

And yet, this new directive demands the opposite. It explicitly instructs researchers to avoid using methods that “subsidize” or “incentivize” transition – a vague prohibition that could limit recruitment, constrain study design, and exclude institutions that provide care. It also bars federal funding to any site offering gender-affirming care to minors, ensuring that the very institutions with the clinical expertise and trust of transgender communities are excluded from the research altogether.

This is not how science works. It is how propaganda works.

There is no scientific integrity in a process that defines its conclusions in advance. There is no public benefit in research that singles out one of the most vulnerable populations – transgender youth – as the sole subject of scrutiny while erasing their overwhelmingly positive outcomes. There is no ethical justification for using federal funds to stigmatize identities and restrict medical freedom.

All aspects of transgender health – positive, negative, and complex – deserve rigorous scientific study. That is what good research does. It seeks truth through comprehensive, community-engaged inquiry. But this directive does not aim for understanding; it fixates exclusively on harm. By selectively funding studies on regret and detransition and explicitly discouraging research that might affirm or support transition, it transforms science from a tool of discovery into an instrument of ideological control. 

The consequences of this directive are real. It will erode trust in health research, particularly among transgender people who already face systemic discrimination in medicine. It will chill academic inquiry, pushing researchers away from transgender health for fear of political reprisal. And it will feed a wave of state-level legislation banning gender-affirming care – legislation that increasingly cites distorted or misrepresented science as justification.

This directive is not just an attack on trans rights. It is an attack on science itself.

We must respond with urgency.

First, institutions that receive NIH funding must speak out. Silence enables political interference to become normalized. Deans, department chairs, and ethics boards must draw a clear line: public health research cannot be allowed to serve discriminatory ends.

Second, scientific societies and journals must reaffirm their commitment to ethical, community-engaged, and evidence-based research on transgender health. This means actively promoting rigorous work that reflects the full complexity of transgender people’s lives. Not just those experiences that fit a political narrative.

Third, Congress must exercise its oversight powers. Lawmakers should demand transparency around how and why this directive was issued and ensure that federally funded research respects both scientific standards and human rights.

And finally, the research community must organize. Transgender health researchers, bioethicists, and community partners need to work together to defend the autonomy of science and the dignity of research participants. This is not a moment for neutrality. It is a moment for moral clarity.

We are living through a time when transgender people are being targeted by laws, banned from public life, and erased from textbooks. Now, the very tools of science are being turned against them. If we don’t stop this weaponization now, the damage won’t just fall on transgender communities; it will fall on all of us who believe in evidence, equity, and truth.

Harry Barbee, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their work focuses on LGBTQ+ health equity and public policy.