The White House
Trans immigrant activist declines invitation to attend White House Pride reception
Jennicet Gutiérrez heckled Obama during 2015 event
The co-executive director of an organization that advocates on behalf of transgender and gender non-conforming immigrants has declined an invitation to attend the White House’s Pride Month celebration on Wednesday.
Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement Co-Executive Director Jennicet Gutiérrez on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview that she “very consciously” decided “not to attend” the event “because the community is under attack.”
“There are people that are coming after us, both politicians and white supremacists, and it just doesn’t feel right to me coming and celebrating and listening to a speech when there are all these attacks happening,” said Gutiérrez. “I don’t see how that can be a solution to what we are dealing with in our daily lives.”
Gutiérrez is a trans woman who was born in Mexico’s Jalisco state.
Gutiérrez noted she and her Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement colleagues over the last eight years have organized around a variety of immigration-related issues that include ending the detention of trans people in immigrant detention centers and stopping the deportation of trans people who ask for asylum in the U.S.
“Those things are still happening,” said Gutiérrez. “So, that’s why I made the conscious decision to decline the invitation.”
Gutiérrez noted three trans women — Victoria Orellano, Roxsana Hernández and Johana “Joa” Medina León — who died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody or immediately after their release in 2007, 2018 and 2019 respectively. (Neither President Obama, nor President Biden were in the White House when Orellano, Hernández or Medina passed away.)
Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the pandemic, remains in place.
The White House in April announced it would terminate the rule the previous administration implemented in March 2020. Title 42 was to have ended on May 23, but a federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s plans.
“Title 42 is still in place and people are stuck, and that’s not ok,” said Gutiérrez. “Communities here are willing to welcome them, to support them, to get them back on track so they can find their way and fight for dreams overall.”
Gutiérrez in 2015 heckled Obama during a White House Pride Month reception.
She pointed out that Biden was standing next to him. Gutiérrez also noted many attendees booed her.
“I was really surprised by the reaction,” said Gutiérrez. “I thought I was surrounded by people that truly care about change, that were fighting for the most vulnerable among us and when they were just bullying and silencing.”
Gutiérrez further described the treatment she received at the reception as “very humiliating.”
“It was really heartbreaking and that’s also part of the problem,” she said. “If we can’t get behind people who are facing so many injustices, then how are we going to fight for all of us … it’s been shown that time after time trans folks and non-binary individuals are often left behind.”
The 2015 reception took place two days before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Obergefell ruling that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples throughout the country. Growing concerns over whether the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down Roe v. Wade will loom over this year’s event.
Gutiérrez described marriage equality to the Blade as an issue that is “very digestible, very pleasing to the mainstream.”
“Rarely did you see trans folks in campaigns and people of color in general being part of it,” she said, once again referring to the reaction she received when she challenged Obama in 2015. “So that to me was very disappointing to see that reaction and to live it and to feel the hypocrisy and how some people are seeking their own benefit and don’t really care about the rest of us.”
The White House has yet to respond to the Blade’s request for comment on Gutiérrez’s decision.
The letter in which Gutiérrez declined the invitation is here.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
The White House
Trump nominates Mike Waltz to become next UN ambassador
Former Fla. congressman had been national security advisor
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he will nominate Mike Waltz to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Waltz, a former Florida congressman, had been the national security advisor.
Trump announced the nomination amid reports that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, were going to leave the administration after Waltz in March added a journalist to a Signal chat in which he, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other officials discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations,” said Trump in a Truth Social post that announced Waltz’s nomination. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security advisor, “while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”
“Together, we will continue to fight tirelessly to make America, and the world, safe again,” said Trump.
Trump shortly after his election nominated U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Trump in March withdrew her nomination in order to ensure Republicans maintained their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The White House
White House does not ‘respond’ to reporters’ requests with pronouns included
Government workers were ordered not to self-identify their gender in emails
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and a senior advisor in the Department of Government Efficiency rejected requests from reporters who included their pronouns in the signature box of their emails, each telling different reporters at the New York Times that “as a matter of policy,” the Trump-Vance administration will decline to engage with members of the press on these grounds.
News of the correspondence between the journalists and the two senior officials was reported Tuesday by the Times, which also specified that when reached for comment, the White House declined to “directly say if their responses to the journalists represented a new formal policy of the White House press office, or when the practice had started.”
“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Leavitt told the Times.
Department of Government Efficiency Senior Advisor Katie Miller responded, “I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts.”
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, wrote in an email to the paper: “If The New York Times spent the same amount of time actually reporting the truth as they do being obsessed with pronouns, maybe they would be a half-decent publication.”
A reporter from Crooked media who got an email similar to those received by the Times reporters said, “I find it baffling that they care more about pronouns than giving journalists accurate information, but here we are.”
The practice of adding pronouns to asocial media bios or the signature box of outgoing emails has been a major sticking point for President Donald Trump’s second administration since Inauguration Day.
On day one, the White House issued an executive order stipulating that the federal government recognizes gender as a binary that is immutably linked to one’s birth sex, a definition excludes the existence of intersex and transgender individuals, notwithstanding the biological realities that natal sex characteristics do not always cleave neatly into male or female, nor do they always align with one’s gender identity .
On these grounds, the president issued another order that included a directive to the entire federal government workforce through the Office of Personnel Management: No pronouns in their emails.
As it became more commonplace in recent years to see emails with “she/her” or “he/him” next to the sender’s name, title, and organization, conservatives politicians and media figures often decried the trend as an effort to shoehorn woke ideas about gender (ideas they believe to be unscientific), or a workplace accommodation made only for the benefit of transgender people, or virtue-signaling on behalf of the LGBTQ left.
There are, however, any number of alternative explanations for why the practice caught on. For example, a cisgender woman may have a gender neutral name like Jordan and want to include “she/her” to avoid confusion.
A spokesman for the Times said: “Evading tough questions certainly runs counter to transparent engagement with free and independent press reporting. But refusing to answer a straightforward request to explain the administration’s policies because of the formatting of an email signature is both a concerning and baffling choice, especially from the highest press office in the U.S. government.”
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