On the first day and in the first week of his second term, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders taking aim specifically at LGBTQ people while rescinding seven actions by the Biden-Harris administration that expanded rights and protections for the community.

As detailed by the Human Rights Campaign, the anti-trans order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” would prohibit the federal government from recognizing people and populations whose birth sex does not match their gender identity, while facilitating discrimination against LGBTQ communities “in the workplace, education, housing, healthcare, and more.”

Additionally, the order directs the attorney general to allow “people to refuse to use a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct pronouns, and to claim a right to use single-sex bathrooms and other spaces based on sex assigned at birth at any workplace covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federally funded spaces.”

The U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security are further instructed to stop issuing documents like passports, visas, and Global Entry cards that conflict with the new, restrictive definition of sex that excludes consideration of trans and gender diverse identities.

The order also would prohibit federal funding, including through grants and contracts, for any content that is believed to promote “gender ideology,” while implementing restrictions on the use of federal resources to collect data on matters concerning gender identity.

There would also be consequences for particularly vulnerable populations, such as rules prohibiting trans women from accessing domestic violence shelters, forcing trans women to be housed with men in prisons and detention facilities, and prohibiting correctional facilities from providing gender affirming healthcare of any kind.

The second executive order targeting LGBTQ people would end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. HRC points out that “The preamble to the order includes a mention of the Project 2025 trope ‘gender ideology,’ while the language does not actually define DEI — meaning that “confusion and differing understandings of what DEI entails are likely to extend the regulatory process and may, in the meantime, have a chilling effect on any efforts that could potentially be considered ‘DEI.'”

Of the Biden-era executive actions that were repealed, HRC called special attention to “President Biden’s directive to agencies to implement the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex includes prohibitions of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The organization notes that the ruling, decided in 2020, remains binding precedent.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days.

A copy of the directive that Politico obtained requires State Department staffers to immediately issue “stop-work orders” on nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards.”

President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order that paused U.S. foreign aid “for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”  

“All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order,” it reads. “The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.”

Politico reported Rubio’s directive is more expansive than the executive order, although it does not stop military aid to Egypt and Israel, emergency food assistance and “legitimate expenses incurred prior to the date of this.”  The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, is among the programs impacted.

“This is a matter of life or death,” said International AIDS Society President Beatriz Grinsztejn in a press release. “PEPFAR provides lifesaving antiretrovirals for more than 20 million people — and stopping its funding essentially stops their HIV treatment. If that happens, people are going to die and HIV will resurge.

The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy.

The decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual relations was one of the previous White House’s priorities in these efforts. The U.S. Agency for International Development in 2023 released its first-ever policy for LGBTQ- and intersex-inclusive development.

Rubio this week issued a directive that bans embassies and other U.S. diplomatic institutions from flying the Pride flag. A second directive that Rubio signed directs State Department personnel to “suspend” any passport application in which an “X” gender marker is requested.

“This guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads the directive. “Guidance on existing passports containing an ‘X’ sex marker will come via other channels.”

The directive stems from a sweeping executive order — “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — that Trump signed on Monday after he took office. The president in his inaugural speech noted the federal government’s “official policy” is “there are only two genders, male and female.”

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes the annual announcement of Oscar nominations, it’s always a day of divisive opinions – but even the most divisive Oscar controversies of the past are bound to end up feeling like a pleasant chat over brunch compared with the one that has predictably erupted over yesterday’s revelation of the Academy’s slate of contenders, in which “Emilia Pérez” became not only the most-nominated film of the year, but the first to score a Best Actress nod for a transgender actor.

It’s a milestone that hardly comes as a surprise. The film’s star, Karla Sofía Gascón, has been considered a front-runner in the category throughout the awards season so far, already winning the Golden Globe for Best Lead Actress (Musical of Comedy) and snagging an equivalent nomination for the upcoming SAG Awards – whose membership also happens to represent the largest percentage of Academy voters, thereby making their choices a solid indicator of how things are going to go down on Oscar night. In any other year, apart from being noted as a historic first and inevitably ruffling a few conservative feathers, Gascón’s inclusion in the lineup would likely otherwise feel like business as usual.

That, however, was before the return of convicted felon Donald Trump to the White House. Days after the former reality show star signed an executive order proclaiming that the United States will henceforth legally recognize only “two genders” (justified in part by the invocation of “concrete reality,” whatever that is), it seems that Academy voters have a dissenting opinion – and suddenly, a simple Oscar nomination feels like an act of resistance against the government itself.

For those who have yet to see the film (which is now streaming on Netflix), “Emilia Pérez” is a sprawling musical drama in which Gascón portrays a powerful Mexican cartel boss who enlists an idealistic lawyer (Zoe Saldaña, also nominated for an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress) to facilitate a gender transition, so that she can disappear from her brutal life of violent conflict and finally live freely as the true self she has always had to keep hidden. It’s an epic-length saga, blending multiple genres into a larger-than-life, unpredictable wild ride that both celebrates traditional cinematic conventions and shatters them.

In addition to the kudos for Gascón and Saldaña, the film – which, though its dialogue is mostly in Spanish, was produced in France, giving it the additional distinction of earning the highest number of nominations of any non-English-language movie in Oscar history – also earned its place among the 10 Best Picture contenders, where it competes against more traditionally styled favorites like “Conclave,” “Wicked,” and the Chalamet-as-Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” as well as “artsier” titles like “Anora” and “The Brutalist.” Additionally, filmmaker Jacques Audiard is nominated as director and co-screenwriter (with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, and Nicolas Livecchi, in the Adapted Screenplay category), with two nods in the Best Song category and a host of so-called “technical” awards to round out its whopping total of 13 – only one nomination fewer than the three films (All About Eve,” “Titanic,” and “La La Land”) currently tied at 14.

Other films on the Oscar roster also gathered a high tally; “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbett’s critically lauded examination of the “American Dream” through the experiences of a Holocaust survivor (Adrien Brody) on his way to becoming a celebrated architect in the mid-20th-century United States, got 10, as did John M. Chu’s blockbuster adaptation of “Wicked” (including one each for stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande). Among other multiple nominees are “Conclave,” “Anora,” and “A Complete Unknown,” along with “The Substance,” which earned a Best Actress nod for previous dark horse candidate Demi Moore as one of its total.

Other nominations of note: Colman Domingo, whose well-deserved Best Actor nomination for “Sing Sing” gives him another shot at becoming the first openly gay person to win in that category; a pair of nominations for literary adaptation “Nickel Boys,” a story of two Black American youths at an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida; a nomination for Isabella Rossellini, daughter of three-time-Oscar winner Ingrid Bergman and Italian cinema maestro Roberto Rossellini, as Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Conclave”; and the inclusion of “Memoir of a Snail,” a uniquely poignant Australian film which features (among other non-kid-friendly things) a pair of queer characters being subjected to conversion therapy, among the nominees for Best Animated Feature.

As always, there were snubs, too: egregiously, Daniel Craig, the star of Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” who was widely seen as a front runner, was shut out for a Best Actor nomination. Guadgnino, who also directed the bisexual tennis romance “Challengers” this year, saw both of his movies come up empty-handed; also left out was a Best Actress nod for Pamela Anderson’s breathtaking comeback turn in “The Last Showgirl,” despite promising buzz and a strong showing at previous awards ceremonies this season.

Nevertheless, while in other years these subjectively labeled hits and misses might be fodder for plenty of debate in the public forum, none of them are even a storm in a teacup compared with the uproar around “Emilia Pérez” – which thus far (at this writing, anyway) has focused on detracting from the merits of the film itself, rather than at its transgender star. We get it: “Emilia Pérez” is not a film for all tastes, so it’s not surprising that many film fans are appalled at the acclaim it has received.

Even so, thanks to the atmosphere of transphobic oppression that has been forced upon us by Trump and his extremist cronies, any discussion of the film and its nominations must now be considered with all one’s critical thinking skills, because any arguments, either for or against its worthiness, might merely be a smokescreen for a deeper agenda than defending a set of cinematic aesthetics.

For our part, of course, we celebrate the film for its bold inclusivity, as well as its fantastical exploration of not only gender, but justice, corruption, politics, and all the contradictory passions that make being human what it is. We also celebrate Gascón’s nomination and the significant historic impact it carries – particularly coming at this precarious moment in the American story.

As for Oscar night, we have no idea what to expect, so our only prediction about the ceremony on March 2 also serves as a bit of advice, courtesy of a quote from a previous Oscar champion: “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”