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Trump says DeSantis signing ‘Don’t Say Gay’ measure ‘a good move’: report

Former president endorses law signed by potential challenger

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Donald Trump reportedly said Gov. Ron DeSantis signing the "Don't Say Gay" law was a "good move."

Former President Trump, in an interview published Thursday where he stood by false claims about having won the 2020 election, said he thinks Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signing into law the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was a “good move,” according to the Washington Post.

Trump was quoted as saying in the interview with the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey he agrees with DeSantis in signing the measure, which vaguely prohibits “instruction” on LGBTQ issues in grades K-3 and more generally “not age-appropriate” settings.

“I do think it was a good move,” he said, although he declined to elaborate, according to Washington Post.

Trump made the reported remarks in the context about discussion about a possible contest between DeSantis and Trump in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election, as well as other possible challenges from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence. Trump, however, threw cold water on the prospects of any of them challenging him.

“If I ran, I can’t imagine they’d want to run,” Trump was quoted as saying. “Some out of loyalty would have had a hard time running. I think that most of those people, and almost every name you mentioned, is there because of me.”

Trump, whose administration was criticized for anti-LGBTQ as defenders called him the first Republican president to be a gay ally, essentially endorses the “Don’t Say Gay” measure despite a segment of LGBTQ community reliability supporting him as conservatives.

In December, Trump with former first lady Melania Trump attended the Log Cabin Republican annual dinner, which last year took place at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Log Cabin Republicans has come out in support of the “Don’t Say Gay” measure.

Proponents of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill have defended the measure by erroneously saying it simply prohibits sex education for K-3 children or would only prohibit school curriculum on sexual orientation or gender identity, even though there’s no limiting principle in the measure restricting its reach. The first lawsuit was filed against the “Don’t Say Gay” measure last week and remains pending in federal court in Florida.

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District of Columbia

Juvenile arrested for anti-gay assault in D.C.

Police say suspect targeted victim in house with Pride flags

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The gay man who was hit in the face by a rock thrown through the front window of his house, shown here, by the juvenile who was arrested told the Blade he and his husband covered the now boarded up window with a large Pride flag. (Washington Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)

D.C. police announced on June 16 that they have arrested a 13-year-old juvenile male on a charge of Assault With Significant Bodily Injury for allegedly throwing a rock through the window of a house in Northeast D.C. and “striking the victim in the face.”

In a statement announcing the arrest, police said the incident took place on Friday, June 6, and  “LGBTQ+ flags were displayed at the front of the home.”

A separate D.C. police incident report obtained by the Washington Blade states, “Victim 1 reports he was sitting in his living room at the listed location watching television when a rock came through the front window and struck him about his left eye. Victim 1 suffered a laceration under his left eye.”

The report adds, “Victim 1 states he observed Suspect 1 running away.”

According to the June 16 statement issued by police, “On Sunday, June 15, 2025, officers located the suspect and placed him under arrest. [A] 13-year-old juvenile male of Northeast D.C., was charged with Assault With Significant Bodily Injury (Hate/Bias).”

The statement says the house where the incident occurred is located on the 400 block of 20th Street, N.E.

Similar to statements D.C. police have issued regarding LGBTQ bias-related cases in the past, the statement announcing this case says that while the case is being investigated as being potentially motivated by hate or bias, that designation could be changed at any time during the investigation.

It adds that a hate crime designation by D.C. police may not be prosecuted as a hate crime by prosecutors. Under D.C. law, juvenile cases are prosecuted by the Office of the D.C. Attorney General. 

Since court records for cases involving juveniles are sealed from public access, the Blade could not immediately determine whether prosecutors designated the case as a hate crime.

It also could not immediately be determined if the juvenile charged in the case was being held in detention while awaiting trial at juvenile court or whether he was released to a parent or guardian and whether a judge set any conditions for release.

The police statement concludes by saying that the department’s Special Liaison Branch, which includes the LGBT Liaison Unit, is assisting with the investigation. 

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Federal Government

Trump anti-trans EO used to deny health care to Democrats, unmarried vets

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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President Donald Trump (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

New rules would allow doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to deny care to unmarried veterans and Democrats at hospitals across the country, pursuant to President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

According to the Guardian, which was first to report the hospital guidelines on Monday, they apply also to psychologists, dentists, and other providers — allowing for individual staff to refuse care for veterans on the basis of characteristics not covered under federal law, which proscribes discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and sex.

Doctors can also be barred from working on VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, per documents reviewed by the Guardian. The agency confirmed changes to the rules came in response to Trump’s executive order.

Specifically, per the paper:

Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items — including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” — have been removed from that list.

Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation.”

Experts warn that changes to the guidelines may lead to situations where, for example, doctors may question patients about whether they attended a rally for a political candidate or in support of gay rights, potentially denying care on those bases or because of the reasons given for seeking care, such as cases where the patient may report a rape or sexual assault.

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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National

New LGBTQ+ Archive to save scrubbed federal resources

Trump’s anti-DEI crusade seeks to erase entire communities

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President Trump’s attacks on DEI have led government agencies to scrub their sites of LGBTQ content. A new initiative aims to preserve the information. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Generally, when someone says, “The internet is forever,” it is not a positive statement. 

But for Shae Gardner, policy director at LGBT Tech, it has become a lifeline as she and her team have spent the last couple of months tracking down documents removed from government websites.

After a series of anti-DEI and LGBTQ executive orders, thousands of pages across the federal government have been removed or altered—with LGBTQ topics taking a big hit.

The LGBTQ+ Archive, launched by LGBT Tech last month, aims to restore lost resources about the LGBTQ community into a centralized hub. They have tracked down approximately 1,000 documents—all available as downloadable PDFs and sorted by agency—but know that more are missing. Users can submit missing documents or requests for missing documents. 

Archived resources range from the 2023 Equity Action Plans mandated under Biden to HIV resource sheets. 

Sid Gazula, LGBT Tech’s Google Policy Fellow said reviewing the documents scrubbed from the Department of Health and Human Services was striking. “You have these important documents related to people’s health. Health isn’t subjective,” he said, “The fact that an executive order could take away all this information was very eye-opening.”

For Gazula it made an already urgent project more urgent. “We, as a community, need access to these resources,” he said, “The archive presents a mechanism to get that access out there.”

The LGBT community has a long history of engaging in archival work, explained K.J. Rawson, professor at Northeastern University and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, in an email. He described archives as “key avenues for preserving and making accessible queer and trans history.”

Since mainstream archives often erase or misrepresent the LGBTQ community, Rawson pointed out that LGBTQ archives “fight against this trend and wrest control back into LGBTQ+ hands,” citing Cait McKinney’s phrase “information activism.” 

Gardner feels appreciative of the history of LGBTQ preservation, which guided their work: “I want to make it abundantly clear that we are not the first or only organization doing this sort of preservation work.” She also mentions the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of web pages, which was invaluable during their research.

When the Blade asked about the LGBT Archive, Rawson described it as “crucial!” He elaborated that, “the overt erasure of LGBTQ+ people––but especially trans people––from federal websites has been a hostile move that’s one part of larger efforts to strip us of our humanity and our history.”

Beyond creating a record for the future, the archive is also useful in fighting for LGBTQ representation today. Gardner explained that numerous journalists and advocacy groups have already been using it. Gazula, who is a student, shared that some of their professors said it was an important resource for academic work. 

To access it, users have to create an account. Gardner said this is not for marketing. Instead, they want to “put a stop gap between us and malicious actors and attacks on the site” and have a basic understanding of who is using the site. She assures users that the data is backed up on servers globally, but encourages folks to download freely from the archive. 

“We decided that we wanted every document and resource on it to be a PDF that they would be able to save it themselves,” said Gardner, “This is not only meant to be very user-friendly, but is also meant to help with those resources being dispersed and being kept.”

“It is the history of our community,” Gardner continued, “we deserve to have continued access to it.”

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