National
U.S. health officials expand approach to monkeypox vaccines as cases crest
At the end of a summer when the number of cases in the monkeypox outbreak rose sharply, the increase in reported infections now appears to be cresting amid increased public messaging and access to vaccines, prompting U.S. health officials to expand their strategy with a new equity-based effort to combat the disease.
Although the reported number of cases, according to most data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, has reached 18,417 in the United States, the number of additional cases decreased from the high at the start of the month, suggesting a downward trajectory in the spread of the disease as vaccines become more readily available.
The numbers are also consistent with a new study finding a significant number of gay and bisexual men, as well as other men who have sex with men, have been limiting contact with casual sex partners, which has been the driving force in the spread of monkeypox. The report from the CDC last week found limiting one-time sexual encounters can significantly reduce the transmission of monkeypox virus, while about half of men who have sex with men are cutting down on sexual activity amid the outbreak, including one-night stands and app hookups.
With the trajectory of monkeypox on the decline, the Biden administration announced a new initiative with the goal of ensuring vaccine distribution is consistent with the value of equity, including on the basis of geographic, racial, and ethnic lines. A total of 10,000 doses of vaccines in the federal government’s supply will be earmarked for localities that have used 50 percent of their allocated supply to support equity interventions, such as outreach to Black and Latino communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the disease or a specific event and celebration for LGBTQ people, health officials announced Tuesday.
Demetre Daskalakis, the Biden administration’s face of LGBTQ outreach for monkeypox and deputy coordinator for the White House monkeypox task force, laid out the details for the new equity-based supplementary initiative in a conference call Tuesday with reporters.
“So what we mean by an equity intervention is what works in your state, county, or city to reach people who we may not be reaching, especially people of color and members of the LGBTQI+ population,” Daskalakis said. “What it means is: It can be working with a specific group or venue that reaches the right people for monkeypox prevention. Once these innovative strategies have been reviewed by CDC, vaccines will be supplied to jumpstart these ideas and accelerate reach deeper into communities.”
The additional equity-based approach to monkeypox vaccine distribution is consistent with the Biden administration’s efforts in recent weeks to distribute additional shots to localities hosting large-scale events for LGTBQ people at the end of the summer, such as Black Pride in Atlanta and Southern Decadence in New Orleans.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards joined the conference call with reporters on Tuesday and had high praise for the Biden administration for making the additional 6,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine available in time for Southern Decadence, which takes place in the final week of August through Labor Day weekend.
“This is an example — I think a really solid example — of what a federal-state-local partnership and — and then the community providers as well,” Bel Edwards said. “Because the public health folks in New Orleans have been tremendous, but also the community providers.”
Bel Edwards said health officials in the Biden administration have, in addition to providing more vaccines, sent down multidisciplinary teams to New Orleans to help the state organize and prepare as well as set up testing and vaccination sites “that are going to be convenient for the at-risk population.”
A reporter from the New Orleans Advocate on the conference call, however, asked a pointed question on the recent distribution of vaccines to New Orleans in advance of Southern Decadence: The current approach to vaccine administration requires a series of shots, and even with new distribution most people won’t have even had their second shot by that time, so how can Southern Decadence think they will be protected, especially when vaccines take time to become fully effective?
Daskalakis, while promoting the equity-based approach to vaccine distribution, said the Biden administration has been “very clear” that first shot of the monkeypox vaccine “doesn’t mean that you’re protected for the event.”
“We’re going to talk to them about lots of other strategies that they can reduce risk of acquiring monkeypox, but also make it clear that that shot is not for today; it’s for four weeks from now, plus two weeks after that second dose when you get maximum protection,” Daskalakis said.
First death of monkeypox patient reported
Although the number of cases is cresting, concern about monkeypox continues as well as the potential danger of the disease. Case in point: The death of a hospital patient in Texas who had monkeypox, but may have to succumbed to other factors, has drawn attention amid a conventional understanding the skin disease isn’t fatal. The case represents the first time in the United States that a patient with monkeypox died while having the condition.
The patient, as confirmed by the Texas Department of State Health Services on Tuesday, was an adult resident of Harris County who was “severely immunocompromised” and state health officials reviewing the case said it is under investigation to determine what role monkeypox played in the death.
Jenny McQuiston, a CDC official who specializes in research on zoological diseases that spread from animals to people, said in response to a question on the casualty that health officials are also evaluating the death and the role monkeypox played.
“I think it’s important to emphasize that deaths due to monkeypox, while possible, remain very rare,” McQuiston said. “In most cases, people are experiencing infection that resolves over time. And there have been very few deaths even recorded globally. Out of over 40,000 cases around the world, only a handful of fatalities have been reported.”
Despite the cresting in the number of cases, many health experts aren’t sold on the new approach to vaccines announced earlier this month by the Biden administration, which sought to expand existing doses of vaccines fivefold as supply hasn’t met demand. The new vaccine approach calls for injecting the JYNNEOS vaccine from the subcutaneous route (delivery of the vaccine under the fat layer underneath the skin) to the intradermal route (delivery of the vaccine into the layer of skin just underneath the top layer).
Bob Fenton, a regional administrator for FEMA and the response coordinator for the White House task force, said about 75 percent of jurisdictions have already adopted the new approach to vaccine injection, while an additional 20 percent are working toward a “fully operational intradermal method.”
“We continue to be laser-focused on doing everything within our power to help jurisdictions and clinicians get shots in arms,” Fenton said. “We’re seeing more and more jurisdictions adopt the intradermal administration.”
Data of this new intradermal approach, critics have said, is insufficient to support the idea it will be as effective as subcutaneous injections, although the Biden administration continues to give assurances the new route for injections is tested and safe. According to a report earlier this month in the Washington Post, the manufacturer of the JYNNEOS vaccine in Denmark, Bavaria Nordic, privately threatened to cut off supply of the shots based on a conversation with health officials on objections the vaccine hasn’t been approved for intradermal use.
McQuiston, in response to a question on whether or not U.S. health officials are collecting newly available real-world information on the results of the new vaccine approach, said U.S. health officials continue to receive data on monkeypox and soon onboard information from additional states.
“CDC operates a system called VAERS — or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — and we’re actively looking at…different types of events that might be reported post-vaccination,” McQuiston said. ” And we are actively gathering information from the different jurisdictions and states and cities about which vaccines they’re administering — whether it’s subcutaneous or intradermal — and we are gathering those data now, as we speak.”
National
Top 10 LGBTQ national news stories of 2025
Trump, Supreme Court mount cruel attacks against trans community
President Trump’s anti-LGBTQ agenda dominated national news in 2025, particularly his cruel attacks on trans Americans. Here are our picks for the top 10 LGBTQ news stories the Blade covered in 2025.
10. Trump grants clemency to George Santos
President Donald Trump granted clemency to disgraced former Long Island Rep. George Santos. Santos was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and had served just 84 days of his more than seven-year sentence. He lied to both the DOJ and the House Ethics Committee, including about his work and education history, and committed campaign finance fraud.
9. U.S. Olympics bans trans women athletes
The United States Supreme Court decided in 2025 to take up two cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.— both of which concern the rights of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams. The cases challenge state laws under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which prevents states from offering separate boys’ and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth. Both cases are set to be heard in January 2026. The developments follow a decision by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to change eligibility rules to prohibit transgender women from competing in women’s sporting events on behalf of the United States, following Trump’s Executive Order 14201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
8. FDA approves new twice-yearly HIV prevention drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 18 approved a newly developed HIV/AIDS prevention drug that needs to be taken only twice a year, with one injection every six months. The new drug, lenacapavir, is being sold under the brand name Yeztugo by pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. According to trial data, 99.9 percent of participants who received Yeztugo remained HIV negative. This emerging technology comes amid direct cuts to HIV/AIDS research measures by the Trump–Vance administration, particularly targeting international HIV efforts such as PEPFAR.
7. LGBTQ people ‘erased’ from gov’t reports
Politico reported in March that the Trump–Vance administration is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report, cutting sections related to the rights of women, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and more. Members of Congress objected to the removal of the subsection on “Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC)” from the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
In a Sept. 9 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.) urged the department to restore the information or ensure it is integrated throughout each report, noting that the reports serve as key evidence for asylum seekers, attorneys, judges, and advocates assessing human rights conditions and protection claims worldwide.
6. Trump admin redefines ‘sex’ in all HHS programs
The Trump administration canceled more than $800 million in research into the health of sexual and gender minority groups. More than half of the National Institutes of Health grants scrapped through early May involved studies of cancers and viruses that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people.
The administration is also pushing to end gender-affirming care for transgender youth, according to a new proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services, NPR reported. The administration is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care. “These rules would be a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on access to transgender health care,” said Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Georgetown University.
5. FBI plans to label trans people as ‘violent extremists’
The Human Rights Campaign, Transgender Law Center, Equality Federation, GLAAD, PFLAG, and the Southern Poverty Law Center condemned reports that the FBI, in coordination with the Heritage Foundation, may be working to designate transgender people as “violent extremists.” The concerns followed a report earlier this month by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who cited two anonymous national security officials saying the FBI is considering treating transgender subjects as a subset of a new threat category.
That classification—originally created under the Biden administration as “Anti-Authority and Anti-Government Violent Extremists” (AGAAVE) — was first applied to Jan. 6 rioters and other right-wing extremists. Advocates said the proposal appears to stem from the false claim that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was committed by a transgender person.
4. Pentagon targets LGBTQ service members
Acting in agreement with the growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment from the Trump administration, during a televised speech to U.S. military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in late September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced past military leadership for being too “woke,” citing DEI initiatives and LGBTQ inclusion within the Department of Defense. During the 45-minute address, Hegseth criticized inclusive policies and announced forthcoming directives, saying they would ensure combat requirements “return to the highest male standard only.”
Since 2016, a Navy replenishment oiler had borne the name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk, who served in the Navy during the Korean War and was separated from service under other than honorable conditions due to his sexuality before later becoming one of the first openly LGBTQ candidates elected to public office. In June 2025, the ship was renamed USNS Oscar V. Peterson.
The U.S. Air Force also announced that transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years would be denied early retirement and instead separated from the military without benefits. Transgender troops will be given the option of accepting a lump-sum payout offered to junior service members or being removed from service.
In February, the Pentagon said it would draft and submit procedures to identify transgender service members and begin discharging them from the military within 30 days.
3. Trump blames Democrats, trans people for gov’t shutdown
Republicans failed to reach an agreement with Democrats and blamed them for the government shutdown, while Democrats pointed to Republicans for cutting health care tax credits, a move they said would result in millions of people paying significantly higher monthly insurance premiums next year. In the White House press briefing room, a video of Democrats discussing past government shutdowns played on a loop as the president continued to blame the Democratic Party and “woke” issues, including transgender people.
“A lot of good can come from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things. They’d be Democrat things,” Trump said the night before the shutdown. “They want open borders. Men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody.”
2. Supreme Court joins attacks on LGBTQ Americans
The U.S. Supreme Court issued multiple rulings this year affecting LGBTQ people. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (6–3), it ruled that public schools must give parents advance notice and the option to opt children out of lessons on gender or sexuality that conflict with their religious beliefs. The case arose after Montgomery County, Md., schools added LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks to the elementary curriculum.
In June, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, protecting similar laws in more than 20 states. Lawmakers and advocates criticized the ruling, and a coalition of seven medical associations warned it strips families of the right to direct their own health care.
The Court also allowed the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender military personnel and to implement a policy blocking passports with “X” gender markers, with the federal government recognizing only male and female designations.
1. Trump inaugurated for second time
President Donald Trump became the 47th president after winning Wisconsin, securing 277 of the 270 electoral votes needed. His guidebook, Project 2025, outlined the Republican Party’s goals under his new leadership, with a particular focus on opposing transgender rights.
Trump nominated openly gay hedge fund executive Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury Secretary, a role he eventually assumed. Bessent became the highest-ranking openly gay U.S. government official in American history.
Honorable mention: The war on rainbow crosswalks escalates around the country
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) ordered state transportation officials to remove a rainbow-colored crosswalk in Orlando next to the Pulse gay nightclub, where 49 mostly LGBTQ people were killed in a 2016 mass shooting. The move follows a July 1, 2025, announcement by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that, with support from President Trump, the department adopted a “nationwide roadway safety initiative” that political observers say could be used to require cities and states to remove rainbow street crosswalks.
Federal Government
Holiday week brings setbacks for Trump-Vance trans agenda
Federal courts begin to deliver end-of-year responses to lawsuits involving federal transgender healthcare policy.
While many Americans took the week of Christmas to rest and relax, LGBTQ politics in the U.S. continued to shift. This week’s short recap of federal updates highlights two major blows to the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for minors.
19 states sue RFK Jr. to end gender-affirming care ban
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday that the NYAG’s office, along with 18 other states (and the District of Columbia), filed a lawsuit to stop U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from restricting gender-affirming care for minors.
In the press release, Attorney General James stressed that the push by the Trump-Vance administration’s crusade against the transgender community — specifically transgender youth — is a “clear overreach by the federal government” and relies on conservative and medically unvalidated practices to “punish providers who adhere to well-established, evidence-based care” that support gender-affirming care.
“At the core of this so-called declaration are real people: young people who need care, parents trying to support their children, and doctors who are simply following the best medical evidence available,” said Attorney General James. “Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices. My office will always stand up for New Yorkers’ health, dignity, and right to make medical decisions free from intimidation.”
The lawsuit is a direct response to HHS’ Dec. 18 announcement that it will pursue regulatory changes that would make gender-affirming health care for transgender children more difficult, if not impossible, to access. It would also restrict federal funding for any hospital that does not comply with the directive. KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism, found that in 2023 federal funding covered nearly 45% of total spending on hospital care in the U.S.
The HHS directive stems directly from President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 Executive Order, Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, which formally establishes U.S. opposition to gender-affirming care and pledges to end federal funding for such treatments.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest and most influential physician organization, has repeatedly opposed measures like the one pushed by President Trump’s administration that restrict access to trans health care.
“The AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria and opposes the denial of health insurance based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” a statement on the AMA’s website reads. “Improving access to gender-affirming care is an important means of improving health outcomes for the transgender population.”
The lawsuit also names Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin as having joined New York in the push against restricting gender-affirming care.
At the HHS news conference last Thursday, Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of the department, asserted, “Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men.”
DOJ stopped from gaining health care records of trans youth
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon blocked an attempt by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to gain “personally identifiable information about those minor transgender patients” from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), saying the DOJ’s efforts “fly in the face of the Supreme Court.”
Journalist Chris Geidner originally reported the news on Dec. 25, highlighting that the Western District of Pennsylvania judge’s decision is a major blow to the Trump-Vance administration’s agenda to curtail transgender rights.
“[T]his Court joins the others in finding that the government’s demand for deeply private and personal patient information carries more than a whiff of ill intent,” Bissoon wrote in her ruling. “This is apparent from its rhetoric.”
Bissoon cited the DOJ’s “incendiary characterization” of trans youth care on the DOJ website as proof, which calls the practice politically motivated rather than medically sound and seeks to “…mutilate children in the service of a warped ideology.” This is despite the fact that a majority of gender-affirming care has nothing to do with surgery.
In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court ruled along party lines that states — namely Tennessee — have the right to pass legislation that can prohibit certain medical treatments for transgender minors, saying the law is not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it does not involve suspect categories like race, national origin, alienage, and religion, which would require the government to show the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored, sending decision-making power back to the states.
“The government cannot pick and choose the aspects of Skrmetti to honor, and which to ignore,” Judge Bissoon added.
The government argued unsuccessfully that the parents of the children whose records would have been made available to the DOJ “lacked standing” because the subpoena was directed at UPMC and that they did not respond in a timely manner. Bissoon rejected the timeliness argument in particular as “disingenuous.”
Bissoon, who was nominated to the bench by then-President Obama, is at least the fourth judge to reject the DOJ’s attempted intrusion into the health care of trans youth according to Geidner.
A Wider Bridge on Friday announced it will shut down at the end of the month.
The group that “mobilizes the LGBTQ community to fight antisemitism and support Israel and its LGBTQ community” in a letter to supporters said financial challenges prompted the decision.
“After 15 years of building bridges between LGBTQ communities in North America and Israel, A Wider Bridge has made the difficult decision to wind down operations as of Dec. 31, 2025,” it reads.
“This decision comes after challenging financial realities despite our best efforts to secure sustainable funding. We deeply appreciate our supporters and partners who made this work possible.”
Arthur Slepian founded A Wider Bridge in 2010.
The organization in 2016 organized a reception at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change Conference in Chicago that was to have featured to Israeli activists. More than 200 people who protested against A Wider Bridge forced the event’s cancellation.
A Wider Bridge in 2024 urged the Capital Pride Alliance and other Pride organizers to ensure Jewish people can safely participate in their events in response to an increase in antisemitic attacks after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported authorities in Vermont late last year charged Ethan Felson, who was A Wider Bridge’s then-executive director, with lewd and lascivious conduct after alleged sexual misconduct against a museum employee. Rabbi Denise Eger succeeded Felson as A Wider Bridge’s interim executive director.
A Wider Bridge in June honored U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) at its Pride event that took place at the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. The event took place 15 days after a gunman killed two Israeli Embassy employees — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim — as they were leaving an event at the museum.
“Though we are winding down, this is not a time to back down. We recognize the deep importance of our mission and work amid attacks on Jewish people and LGBTQ people – and LGBTQ Jews at the intersection,” said A Wider Bridge in its letter. “Our board members remain committed to showing up in their individual capacities to represent queer Jews across diverse spaces — and we know our partners and supporters will continue to do the same.”
Editor’s note: Washington Blade International News Editor Michael K. Lavers traveled to Israel and Palestine with A Wider Bridge in 2016.
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