The White House
Biden labels Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade ‘a sad day for court’
“Imagine, woman having to carry a child that’s a consequence of incest, with no option” to terminate the pregnancy, Biden said
WASHINGTON – Just after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority moved to overturn the constitutional right to abortion on Friday in a 6-3 ruling, President Joe Biden vowed to protect American women from prosecution for traveling to other states to terminate their pregnancies.
Thirteen states have made or will soon make abortion illegal, some without exceptions for rape and incest, following today’s ruling. After a draft of that ruling was leaked in May, some state legislatures considered bills to prevent women from circumventing their restrictions on abortion.
“If any state or local official high or low tries to interfere with a woman exercising her basic right to travel, I will do everything in my power to fight that unamerican attack,” Biden said.
Delivering his remarks from the Great Cross Hall of the White House, the President looked visibly upset, particularly when discussing the extreme abortion bans in some states that will now be allowed to go into effect.
“They are so extreme that women can be punished for protecting their health; that some women and girls will be forced to bear their rapists’ child,” Biden said. It was at this point that he appeared to go off-script to share his personal feelings on the ruling and its implications. “It just stuns me,” he said. “Imagine, woman having to carry a child that’s a consequence of incest, with no option” to terminate the pregnancy.
Biden called for those who share his anger and outrage – many who gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court in protest – to remain peaceful. He urged Americans to vote to give Democrats in Congress the majority that will be necessary for them to codify the constitutional right to abortion first established by the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade and overturned today with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
Biden warned of the “dangerous path the court is taking us on,” pointing to Justice Thomas’s comments in the decision that “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”
Should the court revisit the precedents established by those cases, it could mean constitutional protections for the return of laws banning birth control, sodomy and same-sex marriage.
Biden noted Americans’ constitutional right to abortion was affirmed in multiple decisions by the Supreme Court, endorsed by justices who were appointed by presidents from both parties.
“It was three justices named by one president, Donald Trump, who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said.
President Biden speaks on Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade:
Full transcript:
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BIDEN
ON THE SUPREME COURT DECISION
TO OVERTURN ROE V. WADE
Today is a — it’s not hyperbole to suggest a very solemn moment. Today, the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized.
They didn’t limit it. They simply took it away. That’s never been done to a right so important to so many Americans.
But they did it. And it’s a sad day for the Court and for the country.
Fifty years ago, Roe v. Wade was decided and has been the law of the land since then.
This landmark case protected a woman’s right to choose, her right to make intensely personal decisions with her doctor, free from the inter- — from interference of politics.
It reaffirmed basic principles of equality — that women have the power to control their own destiny. And it reinforced the fundamental right of privacy — the right of each of us to choose how to live our lives.
Now, with Roe gone, let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk.
As Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as Vice President and now as President of the United States, I’ve studied this case carefully. I’ve overseen more Supreme Court confirmations than anyone today, where this case was always discussed.
I believe Roe v. Wade was the correct decision as a matter of constitutional law, an application of the fundamental right to privacy and liberty in matters of family and personal autonomy.
It was a decision on a complex matter that drew a careful balance between a woman’s right to choose earlier in her pregnancy and the state’s ability to regulate later in her pregnancy. A decision with broad national consensus that most Americans of faiths and backgrounds found acceptable and that had been the law of the land for most of the lifetime of Americans today.
And it was a constitutional principle upheld by justices appointed by Democrat and Republican Presidents alike.
Roe v. Wade was a 7 to 2 decision written by a justice appointed by a Republican President, Richard Nixon. In the five decades that followed Roe v. Wade, justices appointed by Republican Presidents — from Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, George W. [H.W.] Bush — were among the justices who voted to uphold the principles set forth in Roe v. Wade.
It was three justices named by one President — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country.
Make no mistake: This decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court, in my view.
The Court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognized.
The Court’s decision to do so will have real and immediate consequences. State laws banning abortion are automatically taking effect today, jeopardizing the health of millions of women, some without exceptions.
So extreme that women could be punished for protecting their health.
So extreme that women and girls who are forced to bear their rapist’s child — of the child of consequence.
It’s a — it just — it just stuns me.
So extreme that doctors will be criminalized for fulfilling their duty to care.
Imagine having — a young woman having to ch- — carry the child of incest — as a consequence of incest. No option.
Too often the case that poor women are going to be hit the hardest. It’s cruel.
In fact, the Court laid out state laws criminalizing abortion that go back to the 1800s as rationale — the Court literally taking America back 150 years.
This a sad day for the country, in my view, but it doesn’t mean the fight is over.
Let me be very clear and unambiguous: The only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose and the balance that existed is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law.
No executive action from the President can do that. And if Congress, as it appears, lacks the vote — votes to do that now, voters need to make their voices heard.
This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level.
We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that.
This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.
Until then, I will do all in my power to protect a woman’s right in states where they will face the consequences of today’s decision.
While the Court’s decision casts a dark shadow over a large swath of the land, many states in this country still recognize a woman’s right to choose.
So if a woman lives in a state that restricts abortion, the Supreme Court’s decision does not prevent her from traveling from her home state to the state that allows it. It does not prevent a doctor in that state — in that state from treating her.
As the Attorney General has made clear, women must remain free to travel safely to another state to seek the care they need. And my administration will defend that bedrock right.
If any state or local official, high or low, tries to interfere with a woman’s ex- — exercising her basic right to travel, I will do everything in my power to fight that deeply un-American attack.
My administration will also protect a woman’s access to medications that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration — the FDA — like contraception, which is essential for preventative healthcare; mifepristone, which the FDA approved 20 years ago to safely end early pregnancies and is commonly used to treat miscarriages.
Some states are saying that they’ll try to ban or severely restrict access to these medications.
But extremist governors and state legislators who are looking to block the mail or search a person’s medicine cabinet or control a woman’s actions by tracking data on her apps she uses are wrong and extreme and out of touch with the majority of Americans.
The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote to me and Vice President Harris stressing that these laws are not based on — are not based on evidence and asking us to act to protect access to care. They say by limiting access to these medicines, maternal mortality will climb in America. That’s what they say.
Today, I’m directing the Department of Health and Human Services to take steps to ensure that these critical medications are available to the fullest extent possible and that politicians cannot interfere in the decisions that should be made between a woman and her doctor. And my administration will remain vigilant as the implications of this decision play out.
I’ve warned about how this decision risks the broader right to privacy for everyone. That’s because Roe recognized the fundamental right to privacy that has served as the basis for so many more rights that we have come to take — we’ve come to take for granted that are ingrained in the fabric of this country: the right to make the best decisions for your health; the right to use birth control — a married couple — in the privacy of their bedroom, for God’s sake; the right to marry the person you love.
Now, Justice Thomas said as much today. He explicitly called to reconsider the right of marriage equality, the right of couples to make their choices on contraception. This is an extreme and dangerous path the Court is now taking us on.
Let me close with two points.
First, I call on everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision, to keep all protests peaceful. Peaceful, peaceful, peaceful. No intimidation. Violence is never acceptable. Threats and intimidation are not speech. We must stand against violence in any form regardless of your rationale.
Second, I know so many of us are frustrated and disillusioned that the Court has taken something away that’s so fundamental. I know so many women are now going to face incredibly difficult situations. I hear you. I support you. I stand with you.
The consequences and the consensus of the American people — core principles of equality, liberty, dignity, and the stability of the rule of law — demand that Roe should not have been overturned.
With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country. They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world. But this decision must not be the final word.
My administration will use all of its appropriate lawful powers. But Congress must act. And with your vote, you can act. You can have the final word. This is not over.
Thank you very much. I’ll have more to say on this in weeks to come. Thank you.
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
Advocacy groups are demanding the Trump-Vance administration not to deport two gay men to Iran.
MS Now on Jan. 23 reported the two men are among the 40 Iranian nationals who the White House plans to deport.
Iran is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
The Washington Blade earlier this month reported LGBTQ Iranians have joined anti-government protests that broke out across the country on Dec. 28. Human rights groups say the Iranian government has killed thousands of people since the demonstrations began.
Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, which represents the two men, told MS Now her clients were scheduled to be on a deportation flight on Jan. 25. A Human Rights Campaign spokesperson on Tuesday told the Blade that one of the men “was able to obtain a temporary stay of removal from the” 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the other “is facing delayed deportation as the result of a measles outbreak at the facility where they’re being held.”
“My (organization, the American Immigration Council) represents those two gay men,” said American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in a Jan. 23 post on his Bluesky account. “They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump (administration) denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.”
“They are terrified,” added Reichlin-Melnick.
My org @immcouncil.org represents those two gay men. They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump admin denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.
They are terrified.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:26 AM
Reichlin-Melnick in a second Bluesky post said “deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act.”
“That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights,” he added.
Deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act. That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights. www.ms.now/news/trump-d…
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:27 AM
HRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Stacy in a statement to the Blade noted Iran “is one of 12 nations that still execute queer people, and we continue to fear for their safety.” Stacy also referenced Renee Good, a 37-year-old lesbian woman who a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador last year.
“This out-of-control administration continues to target immigrants and terrorize our communities,” said Stacy. “That same cruelty murdered Renee Nicole Good and imprisoned Andry Hernández Romero. We stand with the American Immigration Council and demand that these men receive the due process they deserve. Congress must refuse to fund this outrage and stand against the administration’s shameless dismissal of our constitutional rights.”
The White House
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
Current White House took office on Jan. 20, 2025
Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.
“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.
Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.
The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of the cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.
Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”
“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.
US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’
The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.
Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.
“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.
Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”
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