National
New York Times called out for coverage of transgender people
GLAAD billboard circled newspaper’s Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday morning
In a one-two punch aimed directly at the New York Times; more than 100 contributing writers, fellow journalists, celebrities and advocacy organizations today joined GLAAD in demanding change in how the newspaper covers transgender issues and trans people.
First, GLAAD hired a billboard truck to circle the newspaper’s Manhattan headquarters this morning with signs saying, “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist and access to medical care,” among other messages.
“I think what what’s most upsetting here is the damage this is doing,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD CEO and president of the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, told the Washington Blade in her first phone interview on the topic Tuesday. “Every day they’re not stopping is doing more damage. Every time a new article comes out that debates whether or not trans people should receive board-approved healthcare is damaging. And so I feel really strongly that their coverage is dangerous.”
Then, to protest what GLAAD calls the Times’ “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people,” representatives of the organization joined contributors for the Times outside the paper’s building this morning, as they delivered two open letters and issued a joint statement, calling out a “pattern of inaccurate, harmful trans coverage.”
The coalition demands the Times immediately “stop printing biased, anti-trans stories,” meet with members and leaders in the trans community within two months, and within three months hire at least four trans writers and editors as full-time members of the Times staff.
Joining GLAAD are the Human Rights Campaign, PFLAG, the Transgender Law Center, Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Women’s March, director Judd Apatow, comedian Margaret Cho, actor Wilson Cruz, actresses Tommy Dorfman, Lena Dunham, Jameela Jamil, drag superstar Peppermint, activist Ashlee Marie Preston, Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, writer/director/actress Shakina, actress, Instagram influencer and stepmom to Zaya, Gabrielle Union-Wade, TV personality Jonathan Van Ness, activist Charlotte Clymer and more.
“This has been an effort at GLAAD for over a year now,” Ellis told the Blade. “We’ve had several off-the-record meetings with the New York Times to share with them our concerns about the coverage and the reporting that they’ve been doing on the trans community.”
But those concerns fell on deaf ears, said Ellis, and the conversations were unfruitful. “We wouldn’t be going out with a public letter in coalition if they were fruitful. You know, for us going public, it’s always the last resort.”
Times Journalists Speak Out
As GLAAD worked toward publishing its letter, the organization was contacted by Times contributors already in the process of composing their own. A core team of eight journalists collaborated to condemn what they called the newspaper’s anti-trans bias and the real-world impact of that transphobic coverage.
The authors are Times freelancers Harron Walker, Eric Thurm, who is also campaigns coordinator at the National Writers Union and a steering committee member of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Sean T. Collins, who is also a member and organizer of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Cecilia Gentili, a longtime trans activist, Jo Livingstone, Muna Mire, and Chris Randle, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project.
They were joined by Olivia Aylmer, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project who is not a freelancer for the Times.
Not only did other contributing writers sign-on, but so did journalism colleagues, both cisgender and trans, as well as members of the Trans Journalists Association.
“A diverse group of people came together to bring you this complaint,” they wrote. ”Some of us are trans, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record. Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest.”
Those signing that letter include Ashley P. Ford, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado Thomas Page McBee, Andrea Long Chu, Carmen Maria Machado, John Cameron Mitchell, Zach Stafford, Raquel Willis and Maia Monet, among others.
Their letter, addressed directly to Times Standards Editor Philip Corbett, calls out the country’s third most-read paper for executing what it says is “poor editorial judgment,” repeated lack of context in its reporting on trans issues and following “the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy, warranting new, punitive legislation.”
“There is in fact an unethical bias against trans people and transnesss within its coverage of trans issues, by and large,” said Walker, one of the organizers of the contributors’ letter. “There is a pattern of bias, and it’s a violation of the standards own policy as laid out by the standards desk.”
States that have seized upon this anti-trans reporting and opinion pieces by the Times include Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. Already, those states have joined Florida, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah in enacting discriminatory legislation.
Of these, Utah and South Dakota have passed healthcare bans that journalist Erin Reed calls “exceedingly cruel.” For example, South Dakota’s ban is one of those providing specific provisions on how to medically detransition trans teenagers, a practice now state law in Alabama and Arkansas.
“The New York Times coverage is feeding into defending these laws, by virtue of the fact that it’s the so-called paper of record,” Walker told the Blade. “It has one of the largest reaches of any newspaper in the world, it is respected. Even if people on the far right may dismiss it as the ‘failing New York Times,’ it still holds a legitimacy in a process that, you know, means something.”
‘Pattern of bias’
“Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly,” the contributing writers’ letter states. “Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front-page Times coverage, debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.”
GLAAD notes that officials in Texas quoted Emily Bazelon’s June 2022 report to go after families of trans youth in court documents over their private, evidence-based healthcare decisions.
Former Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge cited three Times articles in her amicus brief supporting an Alabama law that criminalizes doctors and parents for ensuring trans youth can access necessary medical care: Bazelon’s 2022 story, Azeen Ghorayshi’s January 2022 piece, and Ross Douthat’s April 2022 op-ed.
The Times’ reporting on trans youth and its reputation as the “paper of record” was cited just last week to justify a bill in a Nebraska legislative hearing, that would criminalize healthcare for trans youth.
Scores of other bills are in the works. Missouri Republicans are once again pushing for healthcare bans. Anti-trans bills in Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi have passed an entire chamber.
But by far the worst anti-transgender legislation and existing laws against the trans community are already on the books in Texas, which Reed calls “home to the weaponization of [Department of Protective Family Services] against transgender people.”
New restrictive bathroom laws are in place in Oklahoma, Alabama and Tennessee. Oklahoma’s healthcare ban restricts even adults, up to the age of 26, from accessing gender-affirming care. Florida has banned Medicaid coverage for trans-related healthcare for adults and is banning gender affirming care for trans teens. And as mentioned earlier, Utah, South Dakota, Arkansas and Alabama have targeted trans teens as well.
‘Britification’ of American media
For the most part over the last two decades, U.S. media had reliably shared a positive view of transgender people, especially youth, highlighting the stories of out trans celebrities like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings. But since the Obergefell decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, trans people have become the religious right’s handy-dandy political boogeyman, to scare the flocks, rally the base and get out the vote. That’s a shift that was preceded by all-out negative coverage of trans issues in the U.K., where with rare exception the mainstream media is in lockstep with what is called the “Gender Critical” movement, opposing trans rights.
Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, and has been tracking coverage of trans issues at the Times.
“I think it’s good to see people speaking up and talking about the really troubling pattern of coverage coming out of the Times, just because the Times is seen as the kind of gold standard for a lot of mainstream liberals,” Drennen told the Blade. “That pattern is especially notable at the Times. But there has been a sort of, you know, Britification, for lack of a better word, of the American media’s approach to trans people.”
Drennen cites a Reuters article from October about gender-affirming care for trans children that featured an extreme close-up photograph of a child wearing braces with a hormone pill on their tongue. “That was really just clearly intended to scare parents,” she said.
Also keeping a close watch on the Times and this Britification effect is Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, where she works to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ people in a variety of civil legal contexts such as healthcare access, immigration and family law.
“In the U.K., the far right, particularly the religious far right, is almost a non-entity. They just don’t have the kind of cultural power and political power that they do in the United States,” Caraballo told the Blade, noting that the Gender Critical movement has taken a a more secular approach to its opposition to trans people, rather than a religious angle.
“In the United States, it’s always been the religious far right, but they are now trying to launder those narratives through these kind of secular outlets, to try to make it seem that the concerns aren’t just inherently based on religious ideology,” she said. “Part of it is this concerted strategy that I think a lot of the Gender Criticals have of particularly appealing to narratives that upper middle class white women would often be more amenable to, especially this idea that women have fought for rights, and somehow the existence of trans people is undermining those rights, because it’s hard to just oppose rights for people if it doesn’t impact you, so you have to create a sense of scarcity, and that’s what they do there. They say that ‘This is erasing women,’ ‘This is erasing women’s rights.’”
Racial bias
Caraballo noted that the people who are writing these stories at the Times are almost universally upper middle class, middle-aged white women, which speaks to the lack of racial diversity at the newspaper.
“I think what’s interesting is the kind of subject of every panic about over-medicalization in mainstream media tend to be white, and then the subject of the panic about kids and sports tend to be Black,” said Drennen. “I don’t need to have a Ph.D to see what’s going on.”
“I think part of it speaks to the lack of racial diversity,” echoed Caraballo. “I’m not surprised that one of the first really positive, outspoken editorials in the opinion column in the New York Times was by a Black man. I think there’s a sense of solidarity and understanding of how these things work, and I think when you have no trans people in the newsroom and no trans people as opinion columnists, and you have a newsroom that’s almost entirely stocked with a demographic that is particularly being targeted by Gender Criticals for pushing their views. I think it’s not a surprise.”
Anti-trans agenda
Caraballo said her conversations with people who work at the Times leads her to suspect this shift toward anti-trans narratives is not the writers or reporters themselves, but the result of an agenda set by their editors.
“For some people like Katie J.M. Baker, who has written extensively about how the media actually works to push transphobic narratives, to then write an article like she did about forcibly outing trans students, it just speaks to either opportunism, not really having a deeply-held belief about this, or just being pushed by the editors. I mean, this was her first major story,” she said. “I worry that what happens is the New York Times often times gives those kinds of views credibility. And you see this with the anti-trans people celebrating every one of these articles, because they view that they’re trans eliminationist and anti-trans positions are being laundered into the mainstream.”
Anti-trans tipping point
In 2014, Time Magazine put Laverne Cox on its cover and declared that trans Americans had achieved a tipping point in acceptance. But at the Times, a shift in who writes opinion pieces has tipped the balance the other way, noted Drennen.
“The New York Times has never been perfect in their coverage, of course. But over the last year, Jennifer Finney Boylan departed from the Times’s opinion section,” she said. While Boylan is still a freelancer for the Times, the bestselling author and scholar’s byline now regularly appears in the Washington Post.
“In the interim, they’ve added two incredibly anti-trans regular columnists, Pamela Paul and David French, the former lawyer for the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, the Alliance Defending Freedom. This has a really troubling pattern of anti-trans sentiment. So, any perceived balance there was just got totally blown out the window over the last year.”
“I’m proud of the work I did for Times Opinion from 2007 to 2022, on hundreds of topics from presidential dogs to the history of the Negroni,” Boylan told the Blade. “As a freelancer, I felt lucky to have a regular slot on the page and was grateful for the trust the editors placed in me. I also wrote many essays about trans identity and trans politics, and was proud to be, for many years, the only ongoing voice on the page representing the wide range of trans identities. I am hoping all those stories put a human face to trans issues for readers of the Times, and opened some hearts.”
Boylan’s name does not appear alongside other Times freelancers in the open letter or the GLAAD letter, but ironically, the Times has been publishing her name in its Bestsellers list for 18 weeks in a row. Her novel, Mad Honey, co-written with Jodi Picoult, has yet to be reviewed in the newspaper or covered in any way, despite it being the most successful book co-written by any transgender person, ever. Is that more evidence of bias, or just a coincidence?
The science ‘debate’
“I am really disappointed that it’s come to this,” said Ellis. “The science is settled on transgender health care. As far as the New York Times is concerned, it is not settled science and they want to use their pages to debate it.”
“It’s so dehumanizing,” added Caraballo, “because you have people debating your rights who have no stake in it whatsoever. They’re not the ones that are going to be denied healthcare. They’re not the ones who are going to be denied housing. They’re not the ones who are going to be kicked out of their homes when they’re forcibly outed to their parents. They have no stake in this. And that is particularly what’s so upsetting, to see all these people that literally will never feel the effects of these policies, constantly talking about how they have ‘concerns.’”
Will the Times agree to their demands?
Drennen said it’s hard to say whether these open letters will have any impact, because “so much of their decision-making is internal.”
For her part, Walker said she remains excited by the coalition that’s been assembled and optimistic, but also realistic.
“Ideally what happens is the New York Times says, ‘Okay, yeah, let’s stop debating whether trans people should be allowed,’ and they start hiring a bunch of trans people. It’s the end of the story. I’m also realistic. I think it’s important to keep some idealism and some optimism in place and also realistic at the same time, which I also think is important. And I fully expect them to do their best to ignore it.”
“We’re too loud to ignore. If you ignore our letter, we’ll find some other way. If you ignore that, we’ll find another way,” Ellis said. “We’re not going to quit until the New York Times acknowledges our demands. And our demands are not outrageous. Within the letter, we’re just talking about stopping your irresponsible reporting, meeting with the trans community and hiring trans writers and editors. These are not outrageous demands that we’re making.”
Charlie Stadtlander, the director of external communications, newsroom, for the Times responded Wednesday afternoon in an email to the Blade addressing the controversy:
“We received the open letter delivered by GLAAD and welcome their feedback. We understand how GLAAD and the co-signers of the letter see our coverage. But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and the Times’s journalistic mission are different.
As a news organization, we pursue independent reporting on transgender issues that include profiling groundbreakers in the movement, challenges and prejudice faced by the community, and how society is grappling with debates about care.
The very news stories criticized in their letter reported deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans teens and adults. Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society — to help readers understand them. Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it.”
Read the letters and who signed them by clicking here.
The White House
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
Current White House took office on Jan. 20, 2025
Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.
“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.
Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.
The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of the cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.
Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”
“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.
US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’
The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.
Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.
“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.
Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”
The White House
A full year of Trump and LGBTQ rights: all that’s been lost
White House since Inauguration Day has relentlessly attacked LGBTQ community
Uncloseted Media published this story on Jan. 20.
By NICO DiALESANDRO | One year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States for the second time. Since then, he and his administration have waged an all-out attack on the LGBTQ community by slashing crucial health and support programs, pressuring states to exclude transgender people from most aspects of life and erasing information about the community’s history. Here are all the biggest moves Trump has made against LGBTQ rights over the last 365 days.
Jan. 20, 2025 – Trump’s second first day
During his inaugural address, Trump says, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” Later that day, Trump signs “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” an executive order that defines “sex” in federal law to mean biological sex at conception. It also eliminates federal recognition of trans identities, blocks gender self-identification on federal documents, ceases federal funding for gender-affirming care and restricts trans people’s access to bathrooms, prisons, shelters, and other government facilities that match their gender identity.
Trump also signs “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” an executive order that orders federal agencies to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion mandates, policies and programs. This order repeals a policy put in place by the Biden administration that created initiatives for the federal government to combat systemic barriers related to hiring on the basis of race, religion, income, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability.
“We’re the party of common sense, you know, we don’t want to have men playing in women’s sports. We don’t want to have transgender operations for everyone,” Trump says at the Liberty Ball party that evening. Trump would go on to repeat the sentiment countless times throughout the year, including at press conferences with world leaders, in an interview with “60 Minutes” and even while deploying the National Guard in Washington.
Jan. 21, 2025 – The flurry of executive orders continues
Trump signs “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” another executive order that revokes a 1965 order which mandated affirmative action for federal contractors and required that they take steps to comply with nondiscrimination laws. The order violates the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which extended Title VII sex-based protections to trans people.
Nearly all LGBTQ- and HIV-focused content and resources are deleted from the White House’s website including the White House’s equity report, information about LGBTQ Pride Month and a fact sheet on expanding access to HIV prevention and treatment. In addition, the State Department removes its LGBTQ rights page, and the Department of Labor removes its LGBTQ workers page.
Jan. 28, 2025 – funding cuts
Trump signs “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order that bars federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors and directs the Department of Health and Human Services to restrict insurance coverage for such treatments under Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Hours after Trump signs the order, Uncloseted Media speaks with six LGBTQ kids to get their thoughts.
“For me, it’s definitely very frightening. Especially because right now I’m 16, and so, I’m going to become an adult over the course of his presidency. … And it’s really difficult, especially to plan for the future and have that lack of surety that I thought that I would,” Crow, who lives in Virginia, told Uncloseted Media.
Feb. 3, 2025
Mentions of LGBTQ people are erased or minimized across federal government websites, with a particular focus on trans and intersex people. The State Department first removes trans people in its travel safety guidelines, only mentioning the “LGB” community. As of publication, the web page has no mention of bisexual travelers either.
Feb. 5, 2025
Trump signs “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” an executive order that prohibits trans women and girls from competing on collegiate female sports teams.
Feb. 13, 2025
Under the direction of Trump’s executive order, the National Park Service removes references to trans and queer rights and history, including from the Stonewall National Monument pages. The “TQ” from “LGBTQ” is dropped in instances where the acronym is present. Protesters gather at the Stonewall National Monument in New York the next day to voice their outrage.
In an interview with Uncloseted Media, Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, calls the removal a blatant attempt to rewrite history and exclude the very people who led the fight for equality.
Feb. 14, 2025
The U.S. withdraws from the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, which formed in 2008 and pledges to support LGBTQ and intersex rights by “work[ing] within the United Nations framework on ensuring universal respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, specifically lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons, with a particular focus on protection from violence and discrimination.”
March 15, 2025 – illegal deportations
The Trump-Vance administration deports 238 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. The administration claims these individuals are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist seeking asylum, is one of the migrants with no criminal record. Hernández vanished from U.S. custody before his asylum hearing, and his lawyer asserts he was deported without due process.
On July 18, Hernández is returned to Venezuela along with 249 other migrants. The Department of Homeland Security dismisses abuse allegations of torture, sexual assault and other inhumane treatment.
April 2, 2025
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updates its policy to recognize only two biological sexes, male and female, for immigration benefit requests and official documentation. This policy shift reverses previous efforts to accommodate nonbinary and trans individuals, as it removes the “X” gender marker option from immigration forms.
“By denying trans people the right to self-select their gender, the government is making it harder for them to exist safely and with dignity. This is not about ‘common sense’ — it is about erasing an entire community from the legal landscape,” says Bridget Crawford, director of law and policy at Immigration Equality.
April 3, 2025
In his first few months in office, Trump and his administration cancel over 270 National Institutes of Health grants focused on LGBTQ health, totaling at least $125 million in unspent funds. The cancellations disrupt research on HIV testing and prevention, AIDS, cancer, mental health and more.
The cuts scrap more than $800 million worth of research into the health of LGBTQ people. The cuts abandon studies of cancers and viruses and set back efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections. They also eliminate swaths of medical research on diseases that disproportionately afflict LGBTQ people, including HIV/AIDs, various sexually transmitted infections and cancers.
June 2, 2025
Stanford begins suspending gender-affirming care for people younger than 19 in response to Trump’s executive order. Other major health networks and many regional centers across the country begin following suit.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announces they will be cutting off care for patients as old as 25 beginning in July, stating that they were left with “no viable alternative” because they could not risk any cuts to their federal funding.
June 6, 2025
Trump’s military ban begins, disallowing trans people from serving in all branches of the armed forces and removing those currently in the service. Those who do not identify themselves will have their medical records surveyed and be involuntarily separated if it is discovered that they are trans.
July 1, 2025
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is passed by Congress. The sweeping package of tax breaks that largely benefit the wealthy include major funding cuts to LGBTQ health care as well as a number of support programs that disproportionately serve queer people.
July 17, 2025
The Trump-Vance administration officially shuts down the LGBTQ-specific option on the 988 youth suicide hotline. This comes a year after data finds that 41 percent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide. Notably, there are no plans to shut down the other targeted hotline options. Arden, who called when they were 16, told Uncloseted Media, “If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”
Aug. 4, 2025
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests 40-year-old asylum seeker Rickardo Anthony Kelly during a routine immigration appointment. Kelly, who survived being shot 10 times in Jamaica by attackers who targeted him for being gay, is released two weeks later and describes the conditions of the ICE facility as “unconscionable,” “inhumane,” and “horrific.”
Aug. 12, 2025
The State Department releases a revised 2024 human rights report that omits references to LGBTQ people and erases mentions of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The report also removes critiques of governments for mistreating LGBTQ communities.
It excludes information about Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ laws that encourage citizens to report their LGBTQ neighbors and that ban depictions of homosexuality or gender transition in schools or the media.
Aug. 15, 2025
The Trump-Vance administration announces plans to eliminate gender-affirming care from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program starting in 2026. The policy would also block access to hormones and surgeries for federal workers and their families.
Aug. 20, 2025
The media reports on court filings that reveal that the Justice Department issued subpoenas to hospitals for private medical records of LGBTQ patients 18 and younger. The DOJ requests billing data, communication with drug manufacturers, Social Security numbers and recordings from providers who treat gender nonconforming minors. Doctors across the country report threats and fear government retaliation.
“The subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach. … It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients,” says Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD law, an LGBTQ legal group and civil rights organization.
Sept. 4, 2025
In response to a mass shooting in Minneapolis that was carried out by a trans woman, CNN reports that the DOJ is considering restricting trans Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The department aims to justify a firearm ban by declaring trans people mentally “defective,” building off of Trump’s trans military ban. The proposal sparks backlash from the National Rifle Association, who says in a statement that they will not “support … gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.”
Sept. 12, 2025
The DOJ removes a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group. The archived report disappears two days after anti-LGBTQ conservative activist Charlie Kirk is assassinated.
Sept. 22, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims the administration is investigating why trans people are turning to “domestic terrorism,” despite no evidence of this. She calls anyone denying the false link “willfully ignorant,” despite the most recent data available from 2018 showing that trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime when compared to cisgender people.
Sept. 23, 2025
Trump cancels a budget meeting and blames a potential government shutdown on Democrats’ support for trans-inclusive policies.
Oct. 1, 2025
FBI Director Kash Patel fires a trainee for displaying a Pride flag on his desk, labeling it an improper “political” message. The dismissal follows reports that pro-Trump appointees are combing internal FBI files to identify LGBTQ employees.
Oct. 3, 2025
Education Secretary Linda McMahon sends a nine-page proposal to nine universities that asks for a commitment to ban trans-inclusive facilities, define sex by “reproductive function” and limit race, gender or identity factors in admissions. The proposal calls for schools to revise their governance structures by “abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Oct. 10, 2025
The White House lays off more than 1,100 HHS employees. The Office of Population Affairs, which administered Title X family-planning networks, teen pregnancy prevention and LGBTQ health initiatives, is eliminated.
Nov. 6, 2025
The Supreme Court grants the Trump-Vance administration’s request to put a hold on federal rulings in Massachusetts, affecting trans and nonbinary people by preventing them from self-identifying correctly on their IDs, claiming to be in line with Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order. In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes, “This court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
Dec. 4, 2025
According to a memo obtained by NPR, the DOJ instructs inspectors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using standards designed to protect trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people from sexual violence. This is in direct violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Dec. 18, 2025
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announce that HHS is heavily restricting trans health care; prohibiting Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care for people under 18; and blocking all Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide the care to minors.
Jan. 1, 2026
The Office of Personnel Management institutes policy changes that exclude coverage for “chemical and surgical” gender-affirming care in the FEHB and Postal Service Health Benefits plans for 2026, with narrow exceptions.
Jan. 7, 2026
Renee Good is shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Good leaves behind a wife, Becca, and three children. In a statement, Becca remembers her wife:
“Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
Days later, Trump tells reporters, “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement. … It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.”
Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni. Washington Blade photos by Michael Key and Michael K. Lavers.
Florida
DNC slams White House for slashing Fla. AIDS funding
State will have to cut medications for more than 16,000 people
The Trump-Vance administration and congressional Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” could strip more than 10,000 Floridians of life-saving HIV medication.
The Florida Department of Health announced there would be large cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program in the Sunshine State. The program switched from covering those making up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, which was anyone making $62,600 or less, in 2025, to only covering those making up to 130 percent of the FPL, or $20,345 a year in 2026.
Cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which provides medication to low-income people living with HIV/AIDS, will prevent a dramatic $120 million funding shortfall as a result of the Big Beautiful Bill according to the Florida Department of Health.
The International Association of Providers of AIDS Care and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo warned that the situation could easily become a “crisis” without changing the current funding setup.
“It is a serious issue,” Ladapo told the Tampa Bay Times. “It’s a really, really serious issue.”
The Florida Department of Health currently has a “UPDATES TO ADAP” warning on the state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program webpage, recommending Floridians who once relied on tax credits and subsidies to pay for their costly HIV/AIDS medication to find other avenues to get the crucial medications — including through linking addresses of Florida Association of Community Health Centers and listing Florida Non-Profit HIV/AIDS Organizations rather than have the government pay for it.
HIV disproportionately impacts low income people, people of color, and LGBTQ people
The Tampa Bay Times first published this story on Thursday, which began gaining attention in the Sunshine State, eventually leading the Democratic Party to, once again, condemn the Big Beautiful Bill pushed by congressional republicans.
“Cruelty is a feature and not a bug of the Trump administration. In the latest attack on the LGBTQ+ community, Donald Trump and Florida Republicans are ripping away life-saving HIV medication from over 10,000 Floridians because they refuse to extend enhanced ACA tax credits,” Democratic National Committee spokesperson Albert Fujii told the Washington Blade. “While Donald Trump and his allies continue to make clear that they don’t give a damn about millions of Americans and our community, Democrats will keep fighting to protect health care for LGBTQ+ Americans across the country.”
More than 4.7 million people in Florida receive health insurance through the federal marketplace, according to KKF, an independent source for health policy research and polling. That is the largest amount of people in any state to be receiving federal health care — despite it only being the third most populous state.
Florida also has one of the largest shares of people who use the AIDS Drug Assistance Program who are on the federal marketplace: about 31 percent as of 2023, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
“I can’t understand why there’s been no transparency,” David Poole also told the Times, who oversaw Florida’s AIDS program from 1993 to 2005. “There is something seriously wrong.”
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates that more than 16,000 people will lose coverage
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
The Greenland lesson for LGBTQ people
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HRC warns LGBTQ progress faltering as Trump enters second year
Comings & Goings
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D.C.’s annual MLK Peace Walk and Parade set for Jan. 19
Capitals to host 10th annual Pride night
