News
Woodward book: Trump surprised top staff with trans military ban
‘They’re getting clipped’ — Book details anti-trans comments made by Trump, Bannon
President Donald Trump ban trans military service. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The new book by journalist Bob Woodward depicting chaos in the White House asserts President Trump announced his transgender military ban before hearing from officials during a planned meeting as he privately made anti-trans remarks describing gender reassignment surgery as “getting clipped,” according to a report in the Washington Examiner.
When Trump announced in a tweet in July 2017 he’d ban transgender people from the U.S. military “in any capacity,” he said he’d consulted military experts on the issue. However, the book — “Fear: Trump in the White House” — reportedly says Trump made the announcement before a planned meeting with top officials on options for transgender service.
Trump delivered the tweets reportedly about an hour before he was set to meet then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and adviser Steve Bannon in the Oval Office to discuss those options, which were made by the National Security Council.
According to the report, the council had no clear consensus from on transgender service and Priebus warned an all-and-all out ban would trigger lawsuits. Therefore, the ban on transgender service members “in any capacity” was surprising.
“What’d you think of my tweet?” Trump reportedly asked Priebus later.
“I think it would’ve been better if we had a decision memo, looped [Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis in,” Priebus replied.
Priebus’ reported prediction on lawsuits came to pass. LGBT legal groups sued Trump over the ban and successfully enjoined the military from carrying the policy. Four federal courts have ruled against the policy and two appellate courts have upheld those decisions, although the litigation continues to make its way through the judicial system.
Although Trump said he consulted experts on that day and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in the daily briefing he gave a heads up to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the book reportedly says the Pentagon chief to the contrary was caught by surprise because he was vacation at the time on West Coast and was concerned about the impact of the tweet on transgender service members.
Sally Donnelly, an aide to Mattis at the time, called Bannon and said the defense secretary opposed the decision by Trump and would try to reverse it.
“Hey, we’ve got a problem with the boss,” she reportedly said. “We can’t stand by this transgender decision. This is just not right. They are American citizens.”
The book reportedly says Bannon responded to Mattis pleas with defiance and anti-trans comments.
“These guys are coming over to get full surgery. We’re supposed to pay for that?” Bannon told her. “You’ve got to take one for the team.”
Although Mattis reportedly expressed sympathy for transgender troops, that didn’t stop him from reaffirming the policy months later. After Trump directed Mattis to review transgender military service in a subsequent memo, the Pentagon chief issued recommendations earlier prohibiting transgender service with limited exceptions. That policy remains on hold thanks to court orders against the ban.
Although Trump reportedly didn’t consult with military advisers before the tweets, he was under pressure from the Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House, which reportedly threatened to vote against the budget if the administration didn’t cut back on military funding for gender reassignment surgery.
Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), an anti-LGBT lawmaker, had at the time introduced to the House floor an amendment banning the Pentagon from paying for transition-related care after making false claims about exorbitant costs of the procedure. Despite her efforts, the measure couldn’t pass the U.S. House even with a Republican majority.
Those false estimates reportedly somehow got to Trump, who made anti-trans remarks about service members getting clipped in response.
“What the fuck? They’re coming in here, they’re getting clipped,” Trump reportedly told Bannon, a reference to enlisting and undergoing surgery. “Not going to happen.”
According to the book, general counsels from the military services had met on the issue. Although they didn’t agree on a way forward, they prepared four options for Trump: Keep the Obama policy allowing transgender service; allow Mattis to come up with his own plan; issue a presidential order permitting transgender troops already in service to remain; or ban all transgender troops from service.
On the day of the tweets, Priebus presented the options to Trump via speakerphone and promised to flesh them out at the scheduled meeting later in the morning.
“I’ll be down at 10,” the president said, according to the book. “Why don’t you guys come and see me then? We’ll figure it out.”
Although Priebus reportedly believed the Trump administration “had found an orderly process on at least one controversial matter,” the former chief of staff shortly thereafter received the notification on his phone about Trump’s tweets and found the decision was made.
The White House has lambasted the Woodward book, which stirred coverage in the media as Trump scandals grow, as a work of fiction.
“This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the president look bad,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people. Sometimes it is unconventional, but he always gets results.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in revelations of the book speak volumes about the transgender ban, the people working for Trump and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
“The details unveiled by this book confirm what we already knew about this president and those working for him,” Keisling said. “Not a single member of his staff was willing to defend the honor of thousands of transgender troops by standing up to the president’s dangerous whims and blatant prejudice. Instead, they rolled over and accepted a ban they knew was immoral, illegal and dangerous to our national security. As senators consider President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, they should ask themselves if Judge Kavanaugh will have any less deference and blind loyalty to the president who nominated him.”
Congress
10 HIV/AIDS activists arrested on Capitol Hill
Protesters interrupted Secretary of State Marco Rubio during hearing
U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday arrested 10 HIV/AIDS activists who protested Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
The activists from Housing Works, Health GAP, the Treatment Action Group, and ACT UP held signs and chanted “Rubio’s Cuts Kill People with AIDS, PEPFAR Saves Lives!” before officers removed them from Dirksen Senate Office Building room where the hearing took place.
A media advisory the Washington Blade received before the protest noted “mounting evidence of Rubio’s attempts to sabotage PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, U.S. bilateral AIDS program) and vital global health programs.” The press release specifically highlighted three specific points:
• Eliminating Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) lifesaving PEPFAR programs, which currently support approximately 12 million people on HIV treatment across 51 countries. Instead, Rubio intends to dismantle CDC’s current PEPFAR role and stamp out their global footprint in disease outbreak and surveillance for pandemics beyond HIV. Experts including eight former CDC Directors under Republican and Democratic administrations have spoken out against this effort to dismantle PEPFAR. Recent PEPFAR data showed sharp decreases in the numbers of people newly tested, diagnosed, and treated for HIV, but these data would have been even worse if not for CDC’s PEPFAR programs.
• Withholding $2 billion in Congressionally appropriated FY25 funding, including $330 million to combat HIV, $250 million to fight malaria, $320 million for maternal and child health programs, and nearly $650 million in global health security programs.
• Negotiating secret bilateral deals blackmailing African governments by demanding access to critical mineral wealth as a condition of access to HIV treatment and prevention funding.
The groups have staged several protests against the Trump-Vance administration’s HIV/AIDS policies since it took office.
Rubio on Jan. 28, 2025, issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department last September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates.
The New York Times last summer reported Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration last July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought a few weeks later said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
The White House in January expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the original regulation, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services. Advocacy groups insist the expanded rule will adversely impact HIV prevention efforts around the world.
“Congress must stop Secretary Rubio before he dismantles PEPFAR,” said Treatment Action Group’s Kendall Martinez-Wright. “Rubio continues to defy the will of Congress and the American people who want this program restored and repaired. Under his leadership he is diverting funding and trying to eliminate the essential role of technical experts in global HIV and global health, while program performance is flailing.”
District of Columbia
JR.’s hosts meet & greet for mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George
Event organized by Capital Stonewall Democrats, Queers for Janeese
D.C. mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George spoke to a crowd of LGBTQ supporters on June 1 at a meet & greet event held at JR.’s on 17th Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
The event, organized by Capital Stonewall Democrats, which has endorsed Lewis George for mayor, with support from a group called Queers for Janeese, was followed by a “get out the vote” canvassing endeavor in which several of those attending the meet & greet visited the homes of nearby residents known to be Lewis George supporters.
The purpose of the canvassing was to remind Lewis George supporters to return their mail-in ballots or go to the polls on June 16 to elect Lewis George as the city’s next mayor, according to Matthew Kavanagh, one of the leaders of Queers for Janeese who attended the meet & greet event at JR.’s.
Local political observers consider Lewis George, a Ward 4 D.C. Council member, and former At-Large D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie, to be the two leading candidates in this year’s race for mayor. The two are among seven mayoral candidates competing in the city’s June 16 Democratic primary.
Lewis George told those attending the meet & greet, which was held on the JR.’s outdoor patio, that she has a long record of advocating for and initiating city polices and laws in support of the LGBTQ community. She said large corporate donors were backing her opponents and urged her LGBTQ supporters to help raise funds for her in the remaining days of the campaign.
Among those attending the meet & greet was gay longtime Dupont Circle civic activist Randy Downs who last November opened a nearby eatery called Protest Pizza. “I am queer and I am a Janeese supporter,” Downs told the Blade.
Stevie McCarty, president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, who also spoke at the meet & greet event, said his group would organize events in support of Lewis George in the remaining days of the campaign. Among them, he said, was an LGBTQ bar crawl in which supporters of Lewis George, including the candidate herself, would visit LGBTQ bars to promote her candidacy.
Virginians for Marriage Equality on Monday launched a campaign in support of repealing Virginia’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman, former state Sen. Adam Ebbin, former state Del. Mark Sickles, and American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia Executive Director Mary Bauer are among those who spoke at the launch that took place in Richmond. State Del. Kirk McPike (D-Alexandria), who co-chairs the campaign, also participated.
“This amendment is about making clear that the government has no business deciding which marriages or which families are worthy of recognition,” said Bauer. “The ACLU of Virginia has been fighting for Virginians’ right to marry who they love since the landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down the ban on interracial marriage. Now we are proud to carry that legacy forward by standing with our coalition partners in the fight to pass this amendment and finally enshrine the right to marriage equality in the commonwealth’s constitution.”
Voters in 2006 approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment.
Same-sex couples have been able to legally marry in Virginia since 2014. Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is a Republican, in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
Two successive legislatures must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can go to the ballot.
Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger in February signed a bill that finalized the referendum’s language.
The referendum will take place on Nov. 3.
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