We know Trump’s Cabinet members have no real experience in the jobs for which they have been confirmed. But we couldn’t have anticipated the royal fuck-up that occurred when the national security team put our national security, and our troops, in danger with their very casual chat, basically public, about classified plans to bomb Yemen. They could be the new Marx Brothers. For those who don’t know, the Marx Brothers, were a slapstick comedy act of Chico, Harpo, and Groucho. Their most famous movies are Duck Soup and Night at the Opera.  

Instead of using a sanctioned high-level email for classified material, they used Signal, a public messaging app. While known for its security and privacy, it has also been known to have been hacked. To top that off, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to the chat. To make things more bizarre, it now appears one of the people on the chat, Steve Witkoff, a Trump negotiator, was in the Kremlin when he took the call, and Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI, was also out of the country, and apparently took the call on her private phone. Again, the Marx Brothers on steroids. 

I can imagine Trump’s bosom buddy, Vladimir Putin, calling him and saying; “Donald, my good friend, спаси́бо (thank you), for making my job so easy. I can now just listen in on your national security calls without any problem at all, again thanks!” Our idiot Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talked about the classified plans giving dates, times, aircraft, etc. These clowns are guilty of a massive breach of national security. Even if they didn’t do it on purpose, to help Putin, they are guilty of being morons of the first degree. All of them once castigated Hillary saying, “but her emails!”

Unless Trump and Musk are stopped, this will happen again, until we totally lose our democracy, unless the courts step in, and Republicans in the Senate take their lips off of Trump’s ass long enough to stand up for the Constitution. Knowing some, like Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is permanently on his knees before Trump, I won’t hold my breath for the Senate as a whole, but in reality, we only need four of them to join with Democrats to stop some of what Trump and his Nazi sympathizing co-president are doing. 

Now Trump wants to take over the post office to control mailing of ballots, and has signed an Executive Order to make voting harder for millions of Americans. One bill in Congress, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, could disenfranchise millions of women who have taken their husband’s name after marriage and their birth certificates won’t match the name they are using to vote. This is unconstitutional, but we will see if the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, will stop this outrage. Then, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), says he can eliminate the federal courts he doesn’t like, by simply defunding them. We are truly in uncharted territory. 

While this is both crazy and frightening, I still have some faith things in the long run will work out. That our democracy, which survived a civil war, will survive. Clearly it will take time to rebuild our credibility around the world, and our allies may never again have the same trust in us. I haven’t been to Europe since Trump began his rampage and created havoc in the world, but will be going in June. I may just wear a T-shirt saying “Don’t blame me, I hate him as much as you do.” I will tell people half of our population thinks as they do, Trump has to go. It isn’t like he has the support of a majority of Americans, but had just enough support, from people who believed his bluster and lies, to get elected. The rest of us will continue to try to stop him, and try to reclaim our country. 

Even if we do, it will take time to rebuild the government, the trust of our allies, and even longer to rebuild our culture. To reclaim our belief in equality. Back to a time when white nationalists couldn’t stand in the town square proclaiming their hate, and a Nazi sympathizer couldn’t stand openly at the arm of our president. A time when racism, homophobia, and misogyny couldn’t be spouted openly in the public square. They have always existed, but once again we will not let people speak hate, without recrimination. Some think this is a pipe dream. But we have to try. I still believe if those of us who care act together, we will prevail.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

By KELLAN BAKER | Since 2009, the world has observed Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) each March 31. The importance of ‘visibility’ feels especially significant this year, not only as a trans person but for me as a researcher whose career has been centered on equity and inclusion for transgender people. My work over the past 16 years, which has focused on advancing fairness, access, and transparency in health care for gender diverse populations, could not have prepared me for the speed and cruelty at which the Trump administration has worked to literally erase transgender people from public life.  

From banning transgender people from serving openly in the military, blocking access to best practice medical care, and making it all but impossible for us to obtain accurate identification documents that match our gender, the impact of these attacks will be felt for years to come. As a scientist dedicated to fostering the health and wellbeing of diverse communities, I am particularly devastated by the intentional destruction of the federal research infrastructure and statistical systems that are intended to ensure the accurate and comprehensive collection of data on the full diversity of the U.S. population.   

The importance of data cannot be understated. This makes the efforts by the federal government to remove survey questions, erase variables from key data sets, and stifle research even more alarming. By simultaneously removing access to existing datasets, removing gender (and other key measures, such as sexual orientation, race, and disability) from key surveys, terminating federal funding for research projects that include trans people, and censoring research projects at federal data centers, this administration’s goal is to erase the lived experiences of trans people – with the idea that if we don’t exist in data and in research, the federal government can claim that we don’t exist at all.  

Just in the past two months, we’ve seen a rapid decimation of the inclusion of transgender people in federal research and their visibility in the federal statistical system.  

Data sets that included gender measures have disappeared from federal websites. Critical data sets used by federal and state policymakers, public health staff, and researchers, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), were removed from the CDC website in response to a Trump executive order that made it the policy of the administration to recognize only two sexes, male and female. Although some datasets have been put back up, gender variables have been removed.  

Surveys that had asked about gender identity no longer do. Claiming that the removal of gender identity measures from key national surveys such as the American Housing Survey, Household Pulse Survey, and National Health Interview Survey were “non-substantial,” the Trump administration has essentially skipped the extensive notice and public comment process that is required to make these types of changes—the same process that were used to add gender identity (and sexual orientation) measures.  

In addition, attempts to exclude trans people and other communities facing disparities from surveys will result in a lack of large enough sample sizes to conduct quality data analysis, while reducing any chance of analyzing racial and ethnic differences among trans people. 

Hundreds of grants supporting inclusive research have been terminated. The unprecedented move of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to terminate research grants that include transgender people is just one example of this administration’s rush to eliminate funding from active scientific projects. In many cases, similar agencies are also now required to remove gender identity measures from federally supported surveys. Prominent trans health researchers have watched as their research portfolios are halted, work stopped, staff laid off, and participants left without care. 

At the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, for example, we have already had seven studies terminated, with a financial impact that exceeds $3 million. One of these cancelled grants was a multi-year, longitudinal study in partnership with the George Washington University to explore the impact of structural racism and anti-LGBTQ bias on HIV risk among young queer and trans people of color nationwide. The notices of termination for this and other awards clearly spell out the administration’s disdain for groundbreaking research that seeks to understand and address health disparities related to LGBTQ populations, particularly trans people. 

Censoring research. As seen with recent changes implemented by the CDC, the censorship of gender-related terms on federal websites and scientific publications is intended to further the erasure of evidence detailing the disparities faced by LGBTQ people. 

On a day dedicated to honoring the lives and contributions of trans people, the impact that these egregious actions will ultimately have on the health and wellbeing of trans and nonbinary people is chilling. Without access to this knowledge, researchers will not be able to examine the repercussions of the harmful policies put forth by this administration and many states across the country, including bans and restrictions that negatively impact trans people’s physical and mental health, economic security, and educational outcomes. 

Although there has been an effort by non-government entities to collect and store previously collected data prior to the Trump administration’s purges, state surveys, private research firms, and academics cannot fill the void left by the federal government’s decision to halt data inclusion. Ensuring that public entities and researchers can continue to use these datasets is only one piece of the puzzle being taken on by groups such as the Data Rescue Project and repositories like Data Lumos. Work also continues thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Trans Survey, the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), and the important research and analysis of both Gallup and The Pew Research Center. Yet, gaps still exist due to threats of federal funding cuts to organizations committed to safeguarding inclusive data assets in the wake of the administration’s continued assault on trans rights.   

This administration suggests that removing one of the only tools available for identifying an entire population of people is a “non-substantial” action. This not only questions the intelligence of the American people but is a direct insult to trans folks everywhere. All people deserve to be counted and to have our experiences included in the story of this country. Transgender people have always been a part of this country, and even if our nation’s surveys choose to exclude us, we continue to exist—authentically, unapologetically, and forever visible.    

Kellan Baker, Ph.D., M.P.H, M.A., is executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker.

It has been 10 years since I started to work on a project that later became “Autistic Initiative for Civil Rights,” the first autistic self-advocacy group in Russia and Ukraine, created by autistic people for autistic people. In a region where most “psychiatrists” couldn’t distinguish autism from schizophrenia, and autistic people were considered to be a “childhood diagnosis” by many “experts,” the idea seemed weird. Especially because I was promoting a neurodiversity paradigm: An idea that the diversity of human brains is normal. The problem of autistic people is not in autism itself, but in discrimination and stereotypes, and being autistic is an even bigger part of me than being trans. Autistic people need support, not a cure.

No wonder that our first allies were LGBTQ organizations, because LGBTQ people knew better than others what it meant when people considered you to be ill and damaged because of their biases.

But there is another reason why the autistic and LGBTQ communities have always been close. There is a connection between being autistic and being LGBTQ.

“People who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times as likely to be autistic,” as the largest study committed on this topic showed. Most of the studies show that the rate of LGB people among the autistic community is two to three times higher.

I started to write about it in Russian, creating special websites and social media projects about LGBTQ autistic people, because Russian is the most common language in post-USSR. I hate Russian politics, but I wanted a wider audience.

I translated a lot of great personal stories written by LGBTQ autistic people from English into Russian, and most of the stories I translated were from the U.S.. 

For years, autistic communities in different countries used the American autistic community as an example and sometimes even as a role model because so many great disability rights activists and autistic activists came from the U.S. 

For example, as a young teenager who’d just found out that they were autistic, I was deeply inspired by the news that autistic activist Ari Ne’eman became the first openly autistic presidential nominee in American history after President Barack Obama in 2009 appointed Ari to the National Council on Disability. I read it in times when, in Russian and Ukrainian, almost all information was written in a way that was telling me that I don’t have a future. And even this information was mostly translations of some old American big charities’ texts. It was American, not Ukrainian or Russian activists who questioned those biases. 

For autistic people like me, the American autistic activists, including American LGBTQ activists, were the anchor.

And now, when the autistic community in the U.S. is under attack from the MAGA government, it may have a global impact, harming not just autistic people in the U.S. but autistic people worldwide, and LGBTQ autistic people will suffer the most.

Robert F. Kennedy, the new secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, promoting the idea that autism is caused by vaccines. In Russia, it is a very common stereotype, and many general practitioners believe in it. I used to speak about WHO norms and American and European studies to fight it, and I am sure that many activists in countries with poorer medicine and higher risks of disease that can be prevented by vaccination did the same. But now, when the leading health organization in an extremely influential country is saying that vaccines cause autism, it made people stop vaccinating their kids globally, which will increase the possibility of a new epidemic.

But there is another problem, an even bigger one, from a moral perspective. Kennedy is erasing years of autistic fights to stop making autism look like a health crisis. 

Moreover, on Feb. 13, President Donald Trump issued an executive order stating that the administration would be creating a commission to attempt to lower the population of autism. People like me are called to be part of an “epidemic.”

In reality, there is no “epidemic” of autism; it is just more specialists who are able to diagnose autism and more people who are ready to search for a diagnosis for them and their children, and autistic people are not a problem for “our [American] economy and our security.”

I spoke with Sam Crane, an autistic disability policy expert and a former legal and policy director of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the organization I used as an example when I was creating my own autistic initiative group:

“Calling autistic people a threat to our country and reopening the discussion about autism and vaccines does nothing to help us,” Crane said. “We need access to healthcare, community-based supports, education, and civil rights — all of which are under threat under this administration. We also need to support research on actual quality-of-life issues, including research by autistic researchers ourselves — both of which this administration has defunded. This especially hurts autistic people who face other kinds of discrimination, such as autistic people of color and autistic LGBTQ people. People who have filed discrimination complaints about multiple kinds of discrimination have had their investigations halted — forcing them to drop their complaints about race or gender discrimination in order to keep their disability discrimination claims active. People may soon be forced to decide between getting gender-affirming healthcare and getting community-based services for their disability-related needs. We deserve real support, but instead this administration is treating us like a problem to be solved.”

Indeed, the Trump administration treated both autistic and LGBTQ people — especially trans people — as a problem to be solved.

LGBTQ autistic people will suffer one of the first, partly because they have fewer chances to fight LGBTQ-phobia and systemic discrimination. And there is also a risk that LGBTQ groups may not understand why they should fight for their autistic siblings.

It will have a broader impact because of the visibility of American activist communities — both autistic and LGBTQ communities. Stereotypes about autistic LGBTQ people will travel across borders just like autistic self-advocacy spread across the world.

Also, there were USAID programs that helped disabled people and LGBTQ people abroad, and this help now will be stopped. 

MAGA is not just harming autistic LGBTQ people in the USA, it’s harming them globally. 

It is April; Autism Awareness Month, promoted by a big charity that was globally demonizing autism, but autistic activists reclaimed April, making it Autistic Acceptance Month.

Now autistic activists, especially autistic LGBTQ activists, need to reclaim the narrative about their lives once again, and the LGBTQ community needs to help them in doing this. This is a fight against the system. Autistic LGBTQ people will always be a part of both the autistic and the LGBTQ community. The question is, would a LGBTQ community help us in this critical moment of our history?